


Vengeance Is Mine

by MPluto



Category: Bonanza
Genre: Action, Drama, Gen, Mystery, What Happened Next for The Crucible
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-05
Updated: 2011-12-05
Packaged: 2017-10-26 22:53:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 28,108
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/288781
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MPluto/pseuds/MPluto
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A year after the worst time of his life, Adam Cartwright sees his old nemesis. No one else does.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Vengeance Is Mine

**Vengeance is Mine**

 

 **Chapter One**

He never considered going to town a chore.  Yes, it was a long way to go just to pick up the mail, but someone had to do it, and the two who didn’t stayed behind to do the menial chores; muck the stalls, fix a wagon wheel, check the herd, ride the fences, and make the occasional repair to the house or the barn.  The ride could be considered boring once you’d done it for the thousandth time, but a book was guaranteed to bring just the right amount of interest to make it enjoyable.  It didn’t hurt to have a horse that knew the way.

When he rode into town, he marveled at the newest things: a new building, a new girl.  He stopped in front of the building, sizing it up, imagining the façade, then moved on, tipping his hat and bestowing his most charming smile upon the girl.  Tying his horse to the hitching post in front of the Silver Dollar saloon, he stepped down just in time to see Early Tibbs fly like a bird out of the batwing doors.  Unfortunately for Early, he was human rather than avian, so he picked himself up, brushed himself off, and strode back in, and in another minute, right on time, his brother Edward rolled out into the street. 

“Goo’ mornin’ to ya, Adam.  I hope I din’t throw dust on your fine black attire,” said Edward, stumbling into Adam.

Wrinkling his nose at the stench of stale liquor, Adam lifted him into a standing position.  “Edward, it’s a bit early, isn’t it?”

“Ain’t ‘a bit’ about it.  It was Early, alright,” Edward answered, tipping his hat and stumbling back into the saloon.

Adam shook his head and smiled at the predictability of the Tibbs brothers.  He stepped up on the boardwalk and made his way toward the post office, greeting friends and tipping his hat along the way.  His pa had sent him to town, anticipating a signed contract for cattle to arrive, and as expected, it was there along with a few other sundry letters and one package addressed to A. Cartwright.

Turning the package over, he looked for a sender’s name that wasn’t there.  Whatever was in it was heavy and roundish.  He ripped the parcel open and found…a rock?   It was an ordinary gray rock about the size of his fist.e looked through the wrapping paper and found nothing else; no note, just a rock.

“Adam, how are you this morning?”

He knew the owner of the unmistakable voice without looking up.   “Fine, Roy,” he said, still examining the rock.  “You?”

“I’m doing alright.  What brings you to town?”

Tossing the rock behind him into the alley, he flapped the envelopes in his hand.  “Just the mail.  Pa’s been anxious to get this contract.”  An uneasiness suddenly washed over him.  He looked up and scanned the bustling populace around him, then froze, the color draining from his face.

Roy looked in the same direction.  “Adam, what is it?”  He looked back at Adam, confused and concerned.

Adam’s eyes didn’t move.  “Excuse me, Roy,” he said, stuffing the mail in his back pocket and trotting across the street.  He had seen a familiar face, but when he made it across the street, he only saw the back of a head bobbing through the throng ahead of him.  Rushing down the crowded sidewalk, he bumped into Mrs. Gables, almost sending her to the ground.  “Mrs. Gables, I sorry,” he said, making sure she was alright even as he looked down the sidewalk.  Without waiting for an acknowledgement, he took several steps forward, searching.  He stepped off the boardwalk into the street and ran to the corner of the next alley, turning, examining every detail of the scene around him. 

His quarry had vanished.

Roy stood back and watched as Adam rushed through and around the people and wares spread out on the boardwalk.  By the time Roy caught up to him, the hairs on the back of his neck were bristling at the unusual behavior displayed by a man he knew to be unflappable.  “Now, don’t try and tell me it’s nothing, son.  Who were you after just now?”

Scratching the back of his neck, Adam took a deep breath that turned into a chuckle.  “I thought I recognized someone, Roy, but he got away from me.  It was probably just someone who favored him.”

“Care to tell me who you thought it was?”

Adam looked around one more time.  “No,” he said, putting a hand on Roy’s shoulder.   “It really doesn’t matter.  It couldn’t have been who I thought.”  He looked back at Roy.  “I’m going to head on home.  Pa’ll be waiting for this,” he said, pulling the mail with the contract out of his pocket.

“Give your pa my regards.”

“I’ll do that.”  Adam walked back over to Sport, mounted and rode out of town.  On the way home, the book remained in his saddlebag.  He spent the entire ride trying to convince himself that the man he saw in town could not have been Peter Kane.

 

 **Chapter Two**

Adam excused himself from the dinner table and retreated to his room.

“Pa, what d’you reckon’s eatin’ at him?” asked Hoss.

Preoccupied for the same reason, Ben’s attention had been lost in his plate of food.  “Hm?  I’m sorry, Hoss, what did you say?”

“It’s Adam, Pa.  He went straight up to his room when he got back from town, except for handin’ you the mail.  He barely ate a bite of his supper, didn’t say a word, and now, he’s back up there in his room.”

“Yeah, Pa.  He was fine this morning,” added Joe.  “Somethin’ must have happened in town.”

Ben grunted.  “He didn’t say anything happened.  He said Roy sent his regards, and Early and Edward Tibbs were throwing each other out of the Silver Dollar.  Nothing unusual about that.”   He looked up at the top of the stairs.  “I’ll look in on him a little later.  Maybe he’s just not feeling well.”  They all looked when Adam came down the stairs, heading for the front door. “Adam?”

“Yeah, Pa?” he answered while fastening his gun belt around his hips.

“Where you headed?”

“Nowhere in particular.  It’s a nice evening, so I thought I’d go for a ride.  I haven’t been to the lake in a while.  Maybe there.”

“Don’t be too late.  We still need to talk about the cattle drive for this new contract.”

Lowering his gaze, Adam scratched his ear.  He’d forgotten all about the new contract.  “Sure, Pa.  I won’t be long.”  He turned and left.

Hoss shoved the last few bites of his dinner into his mouth all at once.  “’scuse me, Pa,” he mumbled with his mouth full.  “I ain’t seen the lake in awhile either.  I think I’ll ask ’im if he don’t mind some comp’ny.”

Walking into the barn with his hands shoved deep into his pockets, Hoss stopped at the door and watched while Adam saddled his horse.  He hadn’t bothered to grab his hat and gun.  He knew he wouldn’t be going to the lake before he got the excuse out of his mouth.  Adam stopped and looked back at him, then curled the corner of his mouth up and turned back to his saddle.  “What’s on your mind, Hoss?”

“I was about to ask you the same question.”  His remark was met with silence.  “Did somethin’ happen in town today that’s got you all quiet?”

Pulling the cinch tight around Sport’s belly, Adam answered, “Nothing out of the ordinary.”   He stopped and licked his lips, then turned around to face his brother.  “Hoss, do you…uh…remember where you and Joe buried Peter Kane?”

Hoss creased his brows in confusion.  “The man you dragged through the desert?  Not exactly, but I could prob’ly find it.  But Adam, why would you want to?”

“I don’t really.”  He snorted.  “Just a silly question.”   He led Sport out of the barn.  After he stepped up into the saddle, he turned.  “Hoss, I’m fine.  You can tell that to Pa and Joe, so the three of you don’t spend the evening worrying about me.’m just going to see the sunset over the lake, and then I’ll be back.”

Hoss nodded and waved as Adam reined Sport around and out of the yard; then he walked slowly into the house, sitting in the leather chair next to the fireplace.  Crossing his legs, he stared off into the room.  His father and Joe had just arranged the furniture so they could play a game of checkers.  Ben sat on the settee and pulled the coffee table closer, and Joe moved the blue chair to the corner of the table.  Both men looked at Hoss, then back to each other.  Joe shrugged.  Ben spoke as he placed his checkers on the board.  “Hoss, I thought you were going with Adam.” 

“Naw, Pa.  I knew he didn’t want any comp’ny.”  Ben glanced at him, nodding, then turned his attention back to his checkers.  “Hey Pa, how long has it been since Adam’s woke up hollerin’ about that Kane fella?”

Joe and Ben turned, giving Hoss their full attention.  “Any particular reason you asked that question, Son?”

“I know it’s been awhile, but I got the feelin’ he’s gonna be wakin’ up at all hours of the night again.”  Leaning forward in his chair, Hoss propped his arms on his thighs with his hands hanging down between his legs. “Dadburnit, if he didn’t just ask me if I remembered where me and Joe buried him.”

***

When Adam arrived at that certain spot at the lake where he always went to think, he dismounted and dropped Sport’s reins.  There was a small patch of sweet grass that grew right up to the edge of the water where Sport stood, blissfully grazing. Adam hopped from boulder to boulder about ten feet into the lake from the water’s edge and sat down.  The sunset this evening promised to be spectacular with feathery clouds spread out all across the horizon and a mist settling down on the mountains in the distance.  He didn’t notice.  Rather, he relived the time a year ago when he had been left to die in the desert by two men who had robbed him.  Little did they know when they left him that if he’d had a choice, he would have preferred death to how he’d ended up surviving.  The man who had saved him only to put him through a living hell; the same man he had tried to drag to survival; the same man Joe and Hoss buried in the desert was the man he was sure he had seen in town earlier that day.

He sat with his forehead in his hand, looking at the face staring back at him from the water’s surface.  _You know Peter Kane is dead.   Hoss said he could find the grave, so you’re not imagining it. Why can’t you accept that the man you saw in town wasn’t Kane, but a man who favored him?  Do you still need to win; to prove that you’re the better man?_   Adam stood with his hat in his hand, picking at a rivet on the band.  He looked out over the water with his brow furrowed and his mouth turned in a frown.  _He’s dead.  Let it go._  Placing his hat on his head, he turned, stepping gingerly back to shore where he gathered up Sport and rode toward home.

 

 **Chapter Three**

It was the early morning hours when Ben awoke to a familiar creak; a sure sign one of the boys was up.  Putting on his robe and sliding his feet into his slippers, he made his way down the hall to the stairs, and stopping on his way down, he quietly watched Adam, sitting on the hearth with a glass of milk and a cookie.

“I thought I heard someone on the stairs,” said Ben.

Adam took a bite of his cookie and washed it down with a sip of milk.  “I didn’t notice the noise until you came down just now.  I’ll fix it tomorrow.”

“I don’t know that I want you to.  Those stairs have squeaked like that for a long time.  They let me know when one of you is up.”

Snorting, Adam took another bite of his cookie.

“Hoss told me you asked him if he could remember where he and Joe buried Kane.”

Adam responded with a nod and slightly raised eyebrows.

“It’s been over a year now.  What brings him to mind?”

Ben waited while Adam slowly chewed his next bite of cookie, then let out a long sigh; a behavior Ben had seen many times when Adam didn’t really want to talk.  But if there was a problem involving Kane, he wanted to know about it.  The last thing he wanted was for Adam to relapse into a time when he thought he would go mad.

“It’s really nothing, Pa.  I saw a man in town who favored Kane.  That’s all.”

“It’s three in the morning. Are you sure that’s all?”

“Well, there was a package waiting for me with the mail.  It didn’t say who it was from.”  He chuckled.  “It didn’t say anything at all.  There was no note.”  He took his last drink of milk, then held the glass by the very top, slowly lowering it until it clunked down on the table.  “It was a rock.”

“What was a rock?”

“The content of the package…was a rock.”

Ben grunted.  “Anything out of the ordinary about this rock?”

“No.  It looked like every other granite rock around here.”

“Do you think it had anything to do with the man you saw who favored Kane?”

Standing, Adam shrugged, then put his hands in the pockets of his robe.  “Pa, I don’t know.  I’m not even sure I saw…”  He looked down at the floor.  “I don’t know.”  Both men stood in silence.

“Well, we’ll talk more about it tomorrow,” said Ben, putting his arm over Adam’s shoulders and turning him toward the stairs. “Maybe with a little more sleep, it’ll make better sense.”

“I don’t know, Pa.  How much sense can you make out of getting a rock in the mail?” 

Noticing the corner of Adam’s mouth turned up and the twinkle in his eyes, Ben smiled.  “You may be right,” he replied as both men headed back up the stairs.

Adam slept peacefully the rest of the night.  The next morning, he sat at his normal place at the dining room table, ate breakfast, participated in conversation, and rode out with his brothers to work.  The rock was forgotten.

 

 **Chapter Four**

Another week passed without any surprises at all, except for a goat wandering into the house.  The four men sat at the dinner table when a faint bleating drifted down the stairs.  They all stopped talking and looked around the table at each other, listening, and when they heard nothing, they picked up their conversation where they left it…until they heard it again.

Adam stood, throwing his napkin on the table.  “I didn’t imagine that,” he said, turning toward the stairs with Joe and Hoss right behind him. When he stopped at the top of the stairs, Joe bumped into him, causing Hoss to bump Joe.  Turning slowly around, Adam glared at both of them, then held his finger up in front of his mouth.  

Joe smiled apologetically while Hoss raised his chin indignantly.  They heard the bleating again.  Tiptoeing down the hall toward the sound, Adam quietly pushed Hoss’s bedroom door open and looked inside.  In another moment, he turned to the others and shook his head, then continued down the hall to his room.  Slowly pushing his door open, he stood straight up, flared his nostrils and frowned.  The goat stood in the middle of Adam’s room with his books scattered in the floor, each one with a bite out of it as if the goat was sampling the literary cuisine.  The goat looked up, bleated again, then continued his feast.  After pinching the bridge of his nose, Adam faced his brothers.  “Which one of you let the goat in the house?” he asked with a condescending smile.

“Not me,” said Joe, wide-eyed, furiously shaking his head. 

Adam looked at Hoss.  “Don’t you go lookin’ at me neither.  I didn’t let the dadburned goat in.”

Growling, Adam stomped into the room and tried to run the goat out, but the goat had other plans.  He lowered his head and charged.  Grabbing the goat’s horns, Adam backed into the far wall.  “Don’t just stand there!” he yelled.  “Help me get this animal out of here!”

Downstairs, Ben sat alone at the dining room table until he heard a loud crash and glass breaking.  Hop Sing ran out of the kitchen, looking around first, then at Ben.  “The billy goat got into the house, and they’re trying to get him out,” explained Ben.

Hop Sing waved his hands in the air as the hurried back into the kitchen, mumbling in Cantonese.  He soon returned with a large spoon and a rope, going to the stairs, mumbling all the way.  When he got to Adam’s room, he stopped at the doorway, shaking his head.  Adam was standing on the bed, Hoss was standing on a chair, and Little Joe was on the floor with his back to a wall, trying to push the goat away by his horns, yelling, “Would someone get this goat off me!”

“You not young boys.  You men.  No pets in house,” scolded Hop Sing.  He went straight to the goat, tied the rope to the goat’s collar, and pulled.  When the goat turned and lowered his head, Hop Sing whacked him between the eyes with the spoon.  Turning, Hop Sing walked out of the room with the goat obediently following behind.

For a moment, they all just stared at Hop Sing as he left with the goat, then slowly, Hoss lowered himself to sit on the chair, and Adam stepped off the bed.  Joe still sat on the floor, scratching his head.

When they arrived back downstairs at the dinner table, Ben held up a hand, stopping them before they sat down.  “If there’s one thing you boys should have learned by now it’s that billy goats are mean.”   His lip curled when he took a deep breath, and just as they were sitting down, he added, “The other thing you ought to know is that billy goats stink.”

All three aborted their downward movement, smelling their hands and their shirts.  They wrinkled their noses, lowered their heads, and went back upstairs to wash and change clothes.

Joe and Hoss were already seated and eating by the time Adam came back down, carrying a stack of books under his arm.  He set the books on the end of the table with a thud before he sat down.  Raising his chin indignantly, he spoke to the air above their heads.  “I will be going into town tomorrow to replace my books.”  Glowering first at Hoss, then Joe, he said, “You can use these for kindling.”  Both smiled nervously and bowed their heads over their plates.  “And close the door behind you when you come into the house,” he spat, eliciting one final flinch from his brothers.

***

Adam took his time riding into town.  He knew his pa had a list of chores for them, and it would serve Hoss and Joe right if they had to do them all in return for allowing a goat to destroy his favorite books.

By the time he had finished ordering new copies, it was lunchtime.  He walked down to Dellaplane’s, a restaurant much more casual than the International House that served simple but good food.

When he opened the door, Lilly Dellaplane greeted him with the same big smile she had always had for him   “Have a seat, Adam.  I’ll be right back with some coffee.”

Looking around, Adam found an empty table in the middle of the room.  Normally he preferred to be closer to a window, but Dellaplane’s was busier than usual, so he took the best of the few tables that remained.  He set his hat down, then walked to the counter behind which Lilly was busy with the coffee, and her father, Bert, was bent over a stove.  “Bert, how’s the steak today?” asked Adam.

Turning, Bert matched Lilly’s smile.  “Good n’ rare, just the way you like it.  Take a load off, and I’ll have your usual right out.”

“Adam, I’m making another pot of coffee.  I’ll bring you a fresh cup in just a minute,” said Lilly.

Taking a newspaper off the counter, Adam went back to his table, then unfolded the paper and began to read.   He noticed Lilly bringing the pot of coffee to the counter, and moved his hat to the chair next to him in anticipation of a steaming cup, then stopped cold.

There was a rock under his hat.

Looking around the room, everyone appeared to be going about the business of eating just as they had been when he arrived.  No one seemed to be missing.  He looked back at the rock.  It appeared to be the same fairly round shape, size, and color as the rock he had received in the mail.  He quickly stood up, carrying the newspaper with him back to the counter.  “Lilly, did you notice anyone at my table while I was over here?”

Lilly kept working with her back to him.  “No, Adam, I haven’t really been paying attention.  The bell at the door hasn’t rung, though.”  She turned around.  “Why do you ask?”

“Because someone left something for me on the table.”

She looked behind him, then looked back confused.  “What did they leave?”

As he turned he asked, “How could you miss…”  

The rock was gone. 

Leaving the newspaper on the counter, he hurried to the table, lifting his hat out of the chair.  Lilly followed.  "I left my hat on the table, and someone put a rock under it.”

“Well, maybe it fell on the floor,” said Lilly, bending to look under the table.  Her voice was muffled as she continued to speak while she looked.  “We get small rocks in here all the time, Adam.”   She brought one back up with her.  “See.  It just rolled off the table.”

“That’s not it.  This rock was as big as my fist.”   They both turned when they heard the bell, and Adam rushed out the door, looking up and down the boardwalk, bustling with Virginia City residents.  Turning back in, he asked Lilly, “Who’s missing?”

She walked over to a table at the back of the dining room, and picked up the coins left there.  “The man who was sitting here.”

Tucking his thumbs under his belt, Adam lowered his head, looking up at Lilly from under his brow, and spoke quietly.  “I know this sounds strange, Lilly, but what did he look like?”

She turned her head slightly as she thought.  “Well, he was tall…with gray hair.  Not really gray, more like silver with a little black mixed in.”   Adam bit his lip.  “Do you know him?” she asked, watching his eyes move back and forth. 

“No.  But apparently, he knows me.”  Reaching out to her hand, he said, “Give your father my apologies.  I have to go.”

He spent the next few hours walking the streets of Virginia City, stopping at all the restaurants, saloons and hotels, asking if anyone remembered seeing the tall man with the silver and black hair.  No one did.

 

 **Chapter Five**

Before Adam left town for home, he went back to the alley where he had tossed the first rock.  He knew finding it was a long shot, but without it, how would he ever convince anyone that a second rock had appeared?  It was gone.

Stopping at Roy’s office, Adam knocked on the door.  “Come on in, Adam.  I was just about to go for my rounds.  What’s on your mind?”

Adam sat down on the chair in front of Roy’s desk, crossed one leg over the other, then placed his hat on his knee.  It took a moment for him to collect his thoughts into one coherent statement, but Roy waited patiently.  “Last year, after I…almost died in the desert…you checked Peter Kane’s background and didn’t find anything.”

“That’s right.  Didn’t find anything about where he came from and no next of kin.”

“Can you check one more time, Roy?”

“Well, if I knew where to start, it might make a difference, Adam, but without some idea, there’s not much chance of findin’ anything else.”

“How might someone find out about a death like Kane’s?”

“A person would have to know where he was and check all the towns in the area.  And even then, the only one likely to remember is me, seein’ as I know you and your pa.  Other lawmen aren’t likely to remember the death of a stranger or what happened to you.  There wasn’t a certificate made out because Joe and Hoss buried Kane in the desert, so there wasn’t a body to examine.”   Roy studied Adam for a moment.  “Now, what’s this all about?  Last time you were in town, you went runnin’ after someone you said couldn’t be there.  Now you’re askin’ about Peter Kane.”

The corner of Adam’s mouth turned up as he nodded slightly.  “Do you remember what I was doing before I went after the man I saw?”

Roy glanced away for moment then looked back with a squint.  “You had just picked up the mail.  You had a contract your pa was waitin’ for.”

“Do you remember what else I had?”

Tilting his head to the side and then back up, Roy leaned forward over the desk.  “You had the mail.  When you looked after that fella you thought you recognized, I looked after you, and what I saw, I didn’t like anymore ‘n what I’m seein’ now.  Now, if you wanna tell me what’s on your mind, I’ll be more ‘n happy to help, but I can’t help if I don’t know what I’m lookin’ for.”

Taking a deep breath, Adam stood and placed his hat on his head.  “As soon as I know, Roy, I’ll let you know.”

When Adam left town, the sun was on its way down, making the ride home a little slower and longer than usual.  Still, there was an early gibbous moon that provided just enough light to make out the road.

He could also make out a rock just before it struck his forehead.

He lay on his back, stunned, remembering the roundish, gray rock that appeared out of the dark.  Before he could completely focus his eyes, a familiar face appeared over him, blurry at first, but intermittently clear, and in a memorable deep, gravelly voice, it said, “You’re never getting out of this desert, Cartwright.”  What followed was the same mad laugh that had haunted him for months and still sometimes woke him in the middle of the night.  Then, there was nothing.

 

 **Chapter Six**

Ben paced the floor in front of the fireplace while the food on the dinner table slowly cooled. Joe sat on a corner of the big coffee table, and Hoss sat in the blue chair with his legs crossed, tapping his fingers on the arm.

Normally, Hoss and Joe would advise their father not to worry, reminding him that Adam was sometimes late to dinner after a trip into town.  But both knew why their father was pacing, and neither blamed him.  Even though they had found Adam and brought him home alive a year ago, they had all feared they had lost him to whatever it was Kane had put him through.  All of them knew Adam to be strong physically and mentally, and though he had eventually healed physically, something had shaken him to his core.  Now, not long after their brother had returned from the hell in which he had been living, Kane, or more aptly, the memory of Kane appeared to be haunting him again.

“Pa, me and Joe ought to go out lookin’ for him,” said Hoss, breaking the heavy silence.

Taking a few more steps, Ben turned with his hands on his hips, looking off into his thoughts.  He grunted, then said, “We’ll all go look for him.  Joseph, go tell Hop Sing we’ll find something to eat when we get back.”

The three men rode down the road leading to Virginia City, and before they crossed the border of their land, they found Sport, contentedly grazing on grass growing at the side of the road.  Joe swung down from Cochise and took Sport’s reins, moving his hand over the horse’s neck and chest, checking his legs and saddle.

“He’s fine, Pa.”

“Look around.”

Ben and Hoss dismounted, all three searching both sides of the road before they began to walk toward town.  They had walked only a short distance when Hoss yelled, “Hey Pa, it’s Adam!”   Hoss knelt next to Adam who was lying on his stomach beside an outcropping of boulders along the side of the road.   He gently turned him over.  “Joe, bring me a canteen.  His forehead’s split open.”

Kneeling on other side, Ben pulled Adam’s bandana from his pocket, and after pouring water on it and wringing it, he lightly blotted the wound.  “Joseph,” he said quietly, wiping away blood that had run down Adam’s nose, “Ride into town for Doc Martin.”

“Pa, it don’t look that bad,” said Hoss.

“I’m not as worried about the wound as I am his skull,” replied Ben without looking up.  “Go on, now, Joseph.  Hoss and I will get him back to the house.”

While Ben attended to Adam, Hoss stood to search the area.  Placing his hand on the boulder next to him, he pulled back when he felt something sticky.  “Here’s where he hit.   There’s fresh blood,” he said, showing his father his hand.  “Somethin’ must’ve spooked his horse.”   He backtracked down the road, knowing Adam would have been headed toward home.   “Hey Pa, look at this.”   Just as Ben turned, Hoss dropped the remains of a trampled rattlesnake.  "I found that not fifteen feet away.”

Grunting, Ben turned his attention back to Adam, patting his face.  “Adam.  Adam, can you hear me, Son?”

“Pa?” he answered, moving his head back and forth. 

“Adam, can you tell me what happened?” asked Ben quietly.

“Rock,” he mumbled.  Then even more faintly, he said, “Kane,” just before he slipped back into unconsciousness.

 

 **Chapter Seven**

Ben found himself pacing in front of the fireplace again, waiting for Paul Martin to call him up or come down the stairs.  Hoss stood at the foot of the staircase, leaning on the post. 

Joe had just come in from bedding down the horses.  “Any word yet, Pa?”

Ben shook his head and resumed his pacing with his hands in his pockets.

Upstairs, Dr. Martin had just begun to bandage Adam’s head, causing Adam to suck in a quick breath.  “Sorry.  I know it hurts,” apologized Paul.  “You’re going to have a headache, probably for several days.  I want you to rest, and let me know if you have any dizziness or nausea.”

Sitting back from his ministrations, Paul considered Adam’s wound.  The story Hoss and Ben had told puzzled him. Normally when a man fell face-first into something his hands reflexively came up to shield him.  Adam’s hands and arms weren’t scraped, bruised, or even sore.  He’d have thought that a direct impact to a boulder as Hoss and Ben had described would have cracked his skull.  As it was, he appeared to have a good-sized dent in his head, but not the type of injury Paul would have expected from a large, relatively even surface.  

After collecting his instruments, Paul closed his bag.  “I’ll tell your father he can see you for a few minutes.  The more you rest, the quicker you’ll recover.”

“Thanks, Paul,” said Adam with his eyes closed and in a barely audible voice. 

Ben and Joe rushed to the stairs when Dr. Martin came down.  “Paul, how is he?”

“He’s awake, though he has one heck of a headache.  I think he’ll be alright, Ben, but he needs to rest.  If he complains of dizziness or nausea send someone to town for me.  You can see him, but not too long.  I gave him something to help him sleep.”   

“Thanks for coming out so late, Paul,” said Ben, walking Dr. Martin to the door. 

“Joe told me you found him on the road with his head split open.   I couldn’t refuse.Say Ben, did Adam say anything to you about what happened?”

Ben took a deep, hesitant breath.  “No.  Not a word.  Why?  Did he say anything to you?”

“No.  I’m afraid even just a little noise right now makes his head pound.  I’ll come back out in a few days and check on him,” said Paul, stepping out of the door.

Ben waved, watching the doctor as he climbed into his buggy and drove out of the yard.  He slowly closed the door, flipping the lock, then turned and looked at his sons.   “Hoss, not a word to anyone about what Adam said.”

“What did he say?” asked Joe, stepping forward.  “You’re not going to keep it from me, are you?”

Smiling weakly, Ben walked to the stairs where Hoss and Joe were standing, putting a hand on each one’s shoulder, his face turning gravely serious.  “He said two words, Joseph.  Rock and Kane.  But until we have a chance to talk to him when he’s himself, neither of you are to speak of it.  I don’t want anyone thinking he’s imagining things.  Your brother Adam does not imagine things.”

“Pa, it don’t make no sense.  Why would he be thinkin’ about Kane at a time like that?” asked Hoss.

“Hoss, sometimes when you have an injury like your brother has, your thoughts are scattered.  And we know Kane’s been on his mind of late.   When he has a clear head, we’ll talk to him, but in the meantime, I don’t want either one of you to mention it to him.  Understood?”  Both men dismally nodded. “Now, why don’t we all turn in?  It’s been a long night.”

Ben stopped at Adam’s room on the way down the hall.  Paul had wrapped a bandage all the way around his head, covering the dressing on his forehead to hold it in place.  It appeared Adam was asleep, though his brow was furrowed.  Straightening the blanket, Ben pulled it up to Adam’s shoulders, blew out the lamp on the night table, and left the room, leaving the door cracked.

Several hours later, Adam jerked awake from the sound of a gunshot.  Looking around, he realized he was in his own bedroom.  Kane had shot the mule, and at that point, Adam knew he was in serious trouble.  But that was then.  Now he sat up, holding his throbbing head in his hands.  He poured himself a glass of water from the pitcher Hop Sing had left on the night table, and just as he was getting back into bed, he heard something skitter across his floor.  His bare feet touched the cool floor and soon took him to the open window.  Leaning on the sill, he deeply inhaled the fresh air to clear his head.  When he opened his eyes, he held his breath.

Not twenty feet away from the house, Peter Kane stood in the moonlight, looking up at him, his laugh deep, low and malevolent.   

 

 **Chapter Eight**

Despite the throbbing in his head that likened itself to the constant pounding of the stamp heads in a stamp mill, Adam pushed himself away from the window sill, pulled his trousers on, and wrapped his robe around himself.  When he got to his door, he stood, leaning against the frame until he was steady enough to step into the hall.  He leaned against the wall as he made his way to the stairway, and after looking down, he barely caught himself on the post before he tumbled head over heels down the stairs.

In his diligence to chase after the man in the yard, he had ignored the noise he was making and awakened everyone in the house, including Hop Sing.  Hoss caught him by his arm on the top step just as Hop Sing headed up from the bottom.

“What in tarnation are you doin’, Adam?” scolded Hoss.

“Kane was in the yard outside my window.  I’m going to find him,” answered Adam determinedly.

Taking his other arm, Ben pulled Adam into him.  “The only place you’re going is back to bed.  Your brothers will look outside,” he said, looking at Joe and Hoss and nodding toward the front door.

Both men trotted down the stairs, taking their guns and heading in opposite directions around the house toward Adam’s window.  They didn’t see or hear anyone.  Searching the ground all the way out to the tree line, both men came up empty-handed.  “There’s nothing out here, Hoss, and from the looks of it there hasn’t been in awhile.  No one ever comes to this side of the house.”

“Yeah, there ain’t no fresh prints anywhere out here.”  As the two men walked back to the front of the house, Hoss added, “I do believe our older brother is seein’ things.” 

“Don’t let Pa here you say that.  Need I remind you that our older brother Adam does not imagine things?”

Hop Sing and Ben had gotten Adam settled back in his bed just as Hoss and Joe came into the room.  “Pa, we didn’t find nothin’,” said Hoss quietly.

With his arm over his head to shield his eyes from the lamplight, Adam whispered, “Hoss, there had to be footprints.”

Ben gave Hoss a questioning glance, eliciting a slight shake of Hoss’s head.  After turning down the lamp, he sat on the side of the bed, speaking softly.  “Adam, it’s dark, and on a windy night like tonight and with your injury…”

“I’m not imagining things, if that’s where you’re going with this.”

Creasing his brow in momentary irritation, Ben took a deep, calming breath.  “I never said you were imagining things.  But it’s the middle of the night, you’ve probably got a concussion, and the rest of us are tired.  Now…we’re all going back to bed,” he said, looking back over his shoulder at Joe and Hoss.  “If you feel like talking tomorrow, we’ll sort it out.”

Adam closed his eyes and nodded.

As everyone left Adam’s room, Ben quietly asked Hoss to go to the bunkhouse and have one of the men watch the house until morning.

The next sound Adam heard was the rooster, signaling the rise of the sun.  His room was still dark, and moving his head to the side, he could see a sliver of light where each side of his curtains met in the middle.  He remembered last night…that Joe and Hoss had seen no sign of Kane outside his window.  If that was so hard to believe, they’d never believe it had been a rock that had knocked him out of his saddle. 

Slowly, Adam rolled to his side, pushing himself up to a sitting position as he lowered his feet to the floor.  He sat still for a moment, waiting for dizziness to clear, and before he rose, Hop Sing appeared at the door.

“Good morning, Missa Adam,” he greeted, continuing on to the other side of the room to place a tray with breakfast on a small table next to a chair.  “Missa Cartlight say you stay in bed.  Rest.  You eat first.  Then I change bandage.” 

Adam looked over at the plate of eggs, bacon, and biscuits and feeling a light lurch from his stomach, he decided too late that he wasn’t ready for a normal meal.  Hop Sing had already hurried out the door.  It didn’t matter. Adam had other plans.  With his head bowed in pain, he slowly made his way to his bureau for his clothes, dressed, and purposefully eased down the stairs. 

He knew there would be objections from the three men sitting at the dining table, so he walked to the front door as fast as he could without dizzily falling to the floor.  Without hesitating, he pulled it open and walked to the closest corner of the house, disappearing around the side with his father and brothers hot on his heels.

“Where in Heaven’s name are you going?” chided Ben.

Adam continued to walk as if he hadn’t heard his father.  When he got to the side yard below his window, he stopped and spun around.  “Now that you’ve all seen that I can walk on my own, you can go right back into the house.  I’m fine.”

Hoss shoved his hands in his pockets and walked toward him.  “Adam, you took a pretty good hit to your head.  You cain’t blame us for bein’ worried.  Besides, I done looked all over this side of the yard.  Whoever you saw covered his tracks real good.  There ain’t nothin’ out here.”

Adam couldn’t be angry at Hoss.  He had always been a calming force, and now was no different.  He bowed his head and closed his eyes, fighting back the nausea that came with the headache.

“Come on back inside, and we’ll figure it all out,” said Hoss, turning half-way and waiting for Adam, who slowly took the few steps that separated them.  Putting a hand on Adam’s shoulder, Hoss walked him back into the house.

 

 **Chapter Nine**

Adam sat in the blue chair with his eyes closed as his father paced around him, halting at the back of the chair.  “Adam, I think we ought to discuss what’s been happening to you.”

“What do you mean ‘what’s been happening to me’?” he asked, propping his elbow on the arm of the chair and lowering his head into his hand.

Walking back to the front of the chair, Ben sat on the big table.  “We found the snake that caused your horse to throw you.  But you said something about a rock…and Kane.”

Adam raised his head and stared at his father for a moment.  “You found a snake?”

“Yeah, and we found where you hit your head on a boulder on your way down,” added Hoss.

“You’ve mentioned Kane three times now, Son; when you thought you saw someone who favored him in town, when we found you on the road coming back from town, and last night, you said you saw him standing in the yard outside your window.  And there’s this business about the rock in the mail.”

Sucking the sides of his mouth in, Adam studied his father, then looked first at Hoss, then at Joe.  “You all think I’m seeing things.”

“I think you saw someone who favored Kane in town, and that knock on your head has made you…think about Kane to the point that it’s clouding what you’re really seeing,” said Ben.  “What made you get up and look out the window last night?”

“I heard something skip across the floor.  It sounded like a small stone, and it came from the direction of the window.  And now you’ll all probably start thinking I’m hearing things.”  He leaned his head back against the chair and closed his eyes. 

Taking a deep breath, Ben studied his son. The tight line of his lips and the crease of his brow told him Adam was still in considerable pain.  “Let’s get you back up to bed.  I’m sure this will all make more sense once your headache is gone.”

Adam didn’t argue.  At the moment, he needed to think everything through, and his headache was making it difficult to concentrate.

***

Adam lay on the bed, looking up at the ceiling.  If he lay perfectly still, the throbbing in his head was reduced to a mild annoyance.  Going over the events of the last few weeks, Adam thought back to the day he was in town to get the mail; the day someone had blessed him with the first rock.  Seeing Kane, or rather someone who looked like Kane…. Kane was dead.  He was sure of that.  But seeing his look-alike made him ignore the rock, dismissing its apparent significance since he had now received, in one way or another, three.

Whoever this was wanted him to believe Kane was alive. 

He breathed deeply and winced at the pounding in his head the movement caused.

What if his pa was right?  He had been thinking about Kane ever since he saw the suspicious man in town.  In fact, seeing him brought back all the memories of the desert he had worked so hard to forget.  Roy hadn’t noticed the stranger, even after Adam had gone after him.  Lilly had described him as a tall man with silver and black hair; a description that fit Kane, but wasn’t really unique.  And now, he had seen Kane in the yard, but no one else had, and there were no signs he had ever been there. 

He had received the first rock the first day he had seen Kane.  He saw the second rock which had disappeared when the man left Dellaplane’s.  Lilly had seen the man, but she hadn’t seen the rock. 

No one had seen the rock that knocked him to the ground.  Kane had been there, too, gloating.

Now he had seen Kane again, but no rock.  Was a rock still coming?  What did the rocks mean?

“Missa Adam?”

Unaware that Hop Sing had entered the room, Adam jerked at the sound of his voice, and grimaced at the newly-flared ache.

“Time to change bandage.”

Adam sat up, waiting in silence until Hop Sing removed all the bandages. "Hop Sing, what would you do if you found yourself in a situation where something happened, you couldn’t prove it, and no one around you believed that it occurred?”

“You not crazy.” 

“How do you know?”

“You not act like crazy man.  You ask good question.”

“So what’s the answer?”

“I take care of.  Nobody else business.”

Adam remained quiet while Hop Sing finished his application of clean bandages.  He knew Hop Sing was a very private man, and though handling his own affairs worked well for Hop Sing, it didn’t work well for him.  His family would never allow him to leave alone, especially in his current physical condition.  He couldn’t lie around and wait for his adversary’s next move, but he had no idea where to start looking for him either.  The only way he might possibly get him to make another move was to be alone.  He’d wait until the headache was manageable, then convince his father he could be useful around the house while his brothers were off working the ranch; maybe something as simple as grooming his horse in the barn. 

He would heal.  And then he would go fishing.

 

 **Chapter Ten**

Another week passed and the bandages were off, but the black and blue of Adam’s forehead still matched the colors around his eyes.

Everyone watched in bewilderment as Hop Sing hurried back down the stairs carrying the tray he had taken up, then placed the plate of food and cup of coffee at the end of the table.  He nodded and smiled before he hurried back into the kitchen.

Ben, Joe and Hoss watched the stairs, anxiously waiting.  Adam appeared at the top, dressed for his day, and slowly made his way down.  At the bottom, he hesitated for a moment, seemingly letting out the breath he had been holding, then walked gingerly to the table, taking his seat and moving his napkin to his lap. “Good morning,” he said cheerfully.

The other three men stared at him for a moment.  Joe frowned and swallowed hard. 

“Don’t let it ruin your appetite.  It looks worse than it is.”  Adam forced a playful smile on his face as he picked up his coffee cup and took a sip.

Hoss raised his eyebrows and began to prepare his plate.  “You must be feeling a whole lot better, Older Brother.  None of us thought you’d be down here for at least another week.”

Adam gave him a smile that was mostly smirk.  “I’ve been confined to my bedroom too long.  It’s time I got out for some fresh air.”

“Got out?” Ben asked, looking up from under his brow.  “I think we need to wait until Paul says it’s time for you to get out.”

“He’s supposed to be here today, isn’t he?  I thought I’d sit on the front porch and read until he gets here.”

The corner of Ben’s mouth turned up.  “I suppose there’s no harm in that, if you feel like it.”

Taking a bite of bacon, Adam answered with a resolute, “I do.”

After breakfast, Adam and his father stood on the porch, waving as Joe and Hoss rode away.  They went to the upper porch, each taking a seat at the table.  As Ben pored over his ledgers, Adam reached into his pocket, bringing out a small rock, and absentmindedly turned it over and over in his hand. 

Hop Sing had crawled under the bed the day he told Adam he wasn’t crazy.  He had brought out a rock, though not just any rock.  It was a small, grayish rock that had been hewn into an almost round shape that matched the larger rocks Adam had seen.  Hop Sing had reiterated, “You not crazy,” when he placed the rock in Adam’s hand.

Adam’s movement caught his father’s attention.  “What do you have there?”

“Oh, nothing really.  Just a rock I found under my bed.”

“Under your bed?  I’ll have to talk to Hop Sing about cleaning underneath the furniture.”

“Pa, there wasn’t anything under the bed but this rock.  The floor was perfectly clean.”  Adam dropped the rock on the table, causing a loud, sharp clatter.

His father glanced over at him, slightly annoyed at the distraction, then went back to his books.

There it sat right in front of his father without him noticing how unusually round it was from being carved, nor did his father question how the rock had ended up under his bed.   Either there was something amiss in the books or he didn’t want to talk about rocks, considering his oldest son had been seeing rocks in odd places.  Adam knew there was nothing wrong with the books. That meant that his father didn’t believe he had seen the rocks, and probably doubted he had seen a man that looked like Kane standing in the yard.  He began to wonder what Joe and Hoss thought.  He’d know soon enough.  The sound of a buggy entering the yard pulled Adam from his thoughts. 

Closing his books, Ben stood and hurried out into the yard to greet Paul Martin.  They exchanged pleasantries while Adam stood waiting on the porch, and when Dr. Martin stepped up, Adam extended his hand.  “Paul, you have no idea how glad I am to see you.”

“Oh?  You mean you’re not enjoying your break from ranch work?”

Chuckling, Adam answered, “The ranch work; yes.  Life outside my bedroom; definitely not.”

“Well, let’s have a look,” said Dr. Martin, setting his bag on the table.  “Have a seat, young man, and let me see your forehead.

“Can I offer you something to drink?” Ben asked. 

“Some of your good spring water would be nice.”  Ben left for the kitchen while Dr. Martin examined the lacerations on Adam’s forehead, then shook his head.  “I don’t understand it.”

“What’s that?”

“Are you sure it was a boulder you hit on your way to the ground?”

Adam’s jaw fell slack as his brow furrowed.  “No, I’m not.  It happened so quickly.  What does it look like to you?”

“Well, if didn’t know better, I’d say you hit something much smaller than a boulder.  But Hoss found blood on the boulder, so that must’ve been where you hit.”

“Smaller?  Like what?”

“Maybe a rock that was lying on the ground.”

 _Or a rock that was flying through the air._

Smiling, Paul closed his bag.  “It really doesn’t matter, does it?  You’re going to be fine,” he said as Ben arrived and set a glass of cold water on the table in front of him.  “Thank you, Ben.”  He took a long drink before he continued.  “I won’t ask that you stay in bed, Adam, but I don’t want you doing anything strenuous just yet.  Why don’t you try some small chores around here for a few days before you go back to anything away from the house?  I’d like to give that gash a little more time to heal.”

Hop Sing came out of the house to collect the coffee cups and noticed the rock on the table while Ben walked Dr. Martin to his buggy.  “You tell Missa Cartlight about rock?”

Taking the rock and putting it back in his pocket, Adam answered, “No, I didn’t.  Not yet.”

Hop Sing shook his head. “Bad thing happen you not tell.”

How could he make Hop Sing, or any of them, for that matter, understand that this was something very personal he had to resolve on his own?  Kane had almost stripped him of his principles; of his dignity.  And though he knew this wasn’t Peter Kane, it was certainly someone who knew Peter Kane and shared his twisted need to mentally tear him apart.  Kane…not Peter Kane…another Kane was playing with his head again. 

 _It’s time I put an end to the game once and for all._

 **Chapter Eleven**

Adam sat on the front porch after dinner while Hoss tended a lame horse.  “Is he doing any better?” Adam asked.

“It’s hard to tell,” answered Hoss, sitting on the edge of the porch, observing the horse.  “He’s still not puttin’ all his weight on it, but it’s not hot.  Maybe he just needs to remember how to walk without the limp.”

Leaning back in the chair, Adam studied his brother with his brows furrowed and a slight grimace.  He had to let someone know what might happen without pushing him into believing he was unstable.  If they believed that, he’d never be left alone for Kane to make his move.  “Hoss, can you keep something to yourself?”

“I reckon that depends on what it is.”

“It’s about Kane.”

“Now Adam…”

“I know Kane is dead.”

Hoss chewed on the inside of his mouth, and then cut his eyes up to Adam’s.

“Whoever this is, he’s not Peter Kane…maybe someone who knew him well, or family…it doesn’t matter.  He’s out for revenge, and he thinks he’ll wear me down if he can make my family or me believe I’m going crazy.”  Leaning forward in his chair, Adam propped his arms on his thighs and clasped his hands.  “He wants me in a weak frame of mind.”

“For what?”

“To prepare me for another game.”

“Adam, when we found you, you were in real bad shape.  We didn’t even know if we were gonna get you home.  But long after your body healed, you still yelled things in your sleep about not playin’ any more games. It was enough for me to know that this Kane fella did more than somethin’ physical to you.  When you started seeing Kane again, we figured you’d had a relapse or somethin’.  It just don’t make no sense.  Why would someone else try to do the same thing?  Wouldn’t he know we’d protect you here?”

“Hoss, he’s using you to try to make me weaker.  He thinks that if my family thinks I’m unstable, I’ll start doubting myself.”  Digging into his pocket, Adam pulled out the small rock Hop Sing had retrieved from under his bed and handed it to Hoss.  “What do you make of this rock?”

“I don’t know, Adam.  It’s a rock.”

“Look closely at it.”

Hoss turned the rock around in his fingers.  At first he frowned, and then his eyebrows slowly rose.  “Hey, this rock’s been cut like this.”

“That’s the rock that Kane, or whoever this is, threw in my window the night I saw him in the yard.  Hop Sing found it under my bed the next morning.  It matches all the other rocks.  It’s just smaller.  Not only that, but Paul doesn’t believe I hit the boulder when I fell off my horse.”

“You never did say what happened.”

“Someone threw a rock and hit me right between the eyes.  It was the same shape and size as all the other rocks, except that one.”  He snorted.  “It could have been the same rock.”

Hoss let his head drop as he passed the rock back to Adam.

“No, keep it.  If I go missing, I want you to show that to Pa…with Hop Sing.  And I want you all to go talk to Paul.”

Standing, Hoss shoved his hands in his pockets and kicked at the dirt. “Adam, if you go missin’ none of us are gonna waste our time ridin’ into town to talk to Doc.  We’ll all be lookin’ for you.”

“Don’t bother.  When Kane takes me, you won’t find me.”

Hoss winced. “Adam, what makes you so sure he’s gonna take you?  He’d have to be plum loco himself if he tried to take you from here.”

“Maybe he is, Hoss.”

“And just what do you think you’re gonna do when he takes you?”

“Find out who he is, why he’s doing this, and put an end to it, once and for all.  Now you promise me you’ll keep this to yourself.”

“Aw, Adam, how do you expect me not to say anything to Pa?”

“Look at it this way.  If I am really crazy, nothing will happen, and this will just be an embarrassing conversation between the two of us.”

 

 **Chapter Twelve**

Joe and Hoss rode out after breakfast, leaving Adam and their father standing on the porch. When they were out of sight, Ben turned back to the house.  “I have a mountain of paperwork to finish. You coming?”  he asked, turning to Adam.

“Paul said I could do some chores around the house.  I think I’ll go clean my saddle…unless you have something else I can do, preferably out of the house.”

Ben smiled. “No, you go ahead and enjoy the fresh air.”

Adam waited until his father closed the front door behind him before he walked to the center of the yard, turning all the way around before he continued into the barn.  He wanted Kane to see he had no gun.

***

“Hey Joe, I plum forgot my tools.  I cain’t build a fence without ‘em.  You go on ahead. I’ll catch up.”

“Hoss, we don’t have to use the same tool at the same time.  You can share mine.”

“Now Joe, you know I have my tools made special to fit my hands.”  Hoss smiled impishly.  “I wouldn’t want to break your little’ns.  Now go on.  I’ll be right behind you.”  As he waited for Joe to continue on, turning his horse back toward the house, his smile faded to a serious expression.  When he arrived home, he halted his horse behind the barn and slowly made his way around the corner, listening.  He heard Adam’s voice along with another deep, low, gravelly voice, but he couldn’t make out any words.  Crouching under a window, he cringed when he knocked over a bucket.  He sank lower under the window and froze.

Holding his gun steady, the man with the gravelly voice threatened, “If you say anything to give me away, I’ll kill him.” 

***

Adam nodded calmly.  He wasn’t afraid for his own life, and he didn’t think this Kane wanted to kill anyone.  Still, he wasn’t going to do anything to provoke him.

Kane moved into the stall next to the barn door. “Call him.  Tell him to throw his gun in first.”

“Come in here,” Adam yelled.  Hoss appeared at the door.  “Throw your gun in.”

Hoss did as he was told.  “Adam, I’m sorry.  I should’a never doubted you.”

Nodding, Adam scratched his ear and smiled.  “Hoss, he’s not out to kill anyone.  Just do what he says.”

Tossing his gun onto the barn floor, Hoss replied, “Well if he ain’t out to kill us, I figure he’s out to do somethin’ worse.”  When Hoss stepped further into the barn, Kane’s gun came down on the back of his head, knocking him out cold. 

Adam winced.  “You didn’t have to do that.  You could have just tied and gagged him.  No one would have missed him until dinner time.”

“Your younger brother…what was his name?”

“Joe.”

“I’m sure Joe will be missing him when he doesn’t show up for work.  Now drag him into the hay stall, tie him, gag him, and cover him.  And tie him tight. I’ll check the rope before we leave.”

“I don’t suppose you could have asked him to walk into the stall before you hit him.  He’s a big boy, and thanks to you, I’m not supposed to do anything strenuous.”  Adam bent and tugged, slowly moving Hoss toward the stall. 

“Move him around and roll him.”  Bending over his brother’s body, Adam glared at Kane from under his brow as he pushed Hoss over on his back.  He was out of breath by the time he had rolled Hoss into the hay stall.  He dropped to his knees, waiting on Kane to hand him a rope, and then he proceeded to tie Hoss’s feet.  “Now tie his hands behind his back, and then tie a rope from his feet to his hands.

“In other words, you want me to hog tie him.”

When Adam finished, Kane waved him to the back of the stall and checked the ropes and gag.  “I’m surprised you tied that so well.”

“You said you were going to check them.  Why would I waste the time?”

“Cover him.  Make it deep.”

When they left, Kane directed Adam through the woods rather than down the road.  The pine needles on the ground hid their footprints.  They would walk half a mile before they reached the horses Kane had hidden, and once mounted, they continued on through the woods.  There would be no tracks to follow.

 

 **Chapter Thirteen**

“Who are you?”

“All in good time, Cartwright.  Just keep riding toward the lake.”

“You’re Peter Kane’s twin, aren’t you?   You look just like him.  You even sound like him.”

“We’ll be there soon enough.  Then all your questions will be answered.  Now keep quiet and ride.”

“We’ve been riding an hour.  You were right.  Joe would have gone back looking for Hoss by now.”

Kane laughed.  “And how long do you think it will take them to find your brother under all that hay?  Once they do, they still have to determine where to look for you.  We left them no tracks to follow.  It really doesn’t matter.  We’re at the lake.  Turn right.  We’re going up.”

***

Joe stopped just short of the yard upon seeing Chubb tied behind the barn.  He bent down from Cochise’s back, taking the other horse’s reins, and then trotted into the yard, calling for Hoss.  Stepping down, he tied both horses to the hitching rail and walked at brisk pace into the house.  “Pa?”

“Over here, Joseph.”

“Did Hoss come in?”

Placing his pen next to the ink well, Ben’s brow furrowed.  “Wasn’t he with you?”

“He said he forgot his tools and came back.”  Joe looked around the room, and then turned back to his father.  “But that was over an hour ago.”

“Maybe Adam saw him.”

“Adam?”

“Yes, Adam’s been in the barn all morning.”

Joe’s nostrils flared.  “Pa, no one answered when I yelled for Hoss in the yard.”  Joe turned and trotted out the door with his father close behind.  Both men stopped inside the door of the barn. 

“Adam?” Ben called.  “Well, Hoss’s horse is here.  They must be around somewhere.”

“Pa, I found Chubb tied behind the barn.”

Ben let out an exasperated breath and quickly looked around him.  He suddenly stopped.  “Did you hear that?”  Joe shook his head.  “Listen.”  Both men stood quietly. 

Glancing quickly up at his father, Joe spun around.  “I do hear something,” he said, walking slowly toward the back of the barn.  The closer he got, the easier it was to make out the grunts coming from the hay stall, and when they stood in front of it, the hay pile was moving.  Dropping to their knees, they threw hay behind them until Hoss was uncovered.

Before Ben could completely remove the gag, Hoss was speaking.  “Pa, we should’a never doubted Adam.  That Kane fella was here.  He took Adam.”

Ben backed away looking doubtfully.  “Hoss, you know as well as I that Kane is dead.  You buried him.” 

“Not that Kane, Pa.  Another one.  See, Adam told me last night that he figured this was another Kane, and Adam was gonna let him take him.  I had a bad feeling when me and Joe left this mornin’, so I came back, and sure enough, the other Kane fella was in the barn.”  Joe finished untying the ropes, and Hoss got to his feet, feeling the back of his head. 

“Yeah,” said Joe, examining the bump on Hoss’s head.  “He walloped you a good one.”

“He must’a made Adam tie me up before they left.”

Ben stood next to Hoss, looking at his eyes. “Are you well enough to ride, son?”

“Yessir.  But Adam said somethin’ else.  He said we wouldn’t find him.”

Puffing up, Ben replied angrily.  “He did, did he?  Well, we’re not going to stop looking until we do.”

***

Kane and Adam dismounted at the top of a wall of boulders leading down to the edge of the lake.  “Take the saddles and bridles off the horses,” said Kane, waving his gun and sitting back on one of the boulders.

Once the tack had been removed from the horses, Kane waved the horses further up the path and out into a clearing where a few wild horses grazed.  “Pick up your saddle.  We’re climbing down.  And don’t try anything.  You’ll just get to the bottom a little quicker if you fall.  There’s nowhere to go down there, but out.”

Swinging the saddle over his shoulder onto his back, Adam approached the edge of the boulders.  The way down was steep, but there were plenty of hand and footholds.  He knew they were still on Ponderosa property, but he’d never been to this particular spot. Based on the terrain where they had made their last turn, he would never have ventured this far up in the rocks.  There was no forage, so finding strays here would have been unlikely, and if he had come to the lake to relax, he would have stopped at a place where the water was more accessible.

As he looked down between steps, he noticed the front of a boat on the water below.  “You intend to take me across the lake?”

“Just keep moving.  You’ll find out soon enough.”

Arriving at the bottom, the only place Adam could go was onto a raft.  He stepped aboard and looked around.  A heavy wooden box shelter sat in the middle with about six feet of clear space in front and back and maybe four feet on either side.  From what Adam could see, it was secured to the floor timbers with bolts and metal L-brackets. 

He turned to face Kane.  “Now what?”

“Put the saddle down and empty your pockets.”

“Well, that’s easy.”  Adam dropped the saddle and pulled out the lining of his pockets.”

“You think you’ve got this figured out, don’t you Cartwright?  Think again.  Take off your belt and your boots.”  Kane waited while Adam complied.  He lowered his face, and looked up, glaring, speaking in a low, threatening voice.  “Now.  Get in the box.”

 

 **Chapter Fourteen**

Getting comfortable in his new accommodations, Adam sat against the back wall of the shelter, looking at everything around him as he listened to Kane work outside on the raft.  Sitting was going to be much easier than standing since standing would mean he’d have to stay bent. The shelter was only five feet high.  The best he could do to stretch out would be to lie corner to corner, and even that was too small a space.  He had come in through a narrow door with a window about a foot wide and about three inches high that was covered with a metal door.  There was a smaller door on the roof of the shelter, though not big enough to crawl through.  It appeared to be latched on the outside.  Both sides of the shelter had several holes no bigger than 2 inches in circumference.  He would be able to see what they were passing, but he wouldn’t be able to see where they were going or from where they had come.  There were no holes in the front and back walls.  Lastly, there was one four-inch hole in a corner of the floor.  He looked down into it.  Apparently, the raft was sitting on larger timbers along the sides because there was a gap between the floor of the shelter and the water.

After he had entered the shelter, Kane hadn’t said another word to him, but he could hear a boat being loaded, he assumed, somewhere behind him.  The thuds of what sounded like bags and boxes mixed with the sound of water sloshing.  Then he heard…was that a goat?  He heard the clop of small hooves on the wood of the raft, moving around behind him, then to the side and finally in front of the shelter.  Then he heard the unmistakable bleat, and next the smell of a billy wafted in.

Adam blew out a breath.  It seemed that whatever Kane was up to was something beyond anything Adam had imagined.  Still, he was convinced that Kane wasn’t going to kill him.  Killing him would put an end to whatever suffering Kane wanted him to feel.  He was prepared for mistreatment, even cruelty.  For now, he would collect information to plan his escape, but would wait to make an attempt until all his questions were answered. 

The raft began to move, dipping slightly from side to side.  Kane had pushed away from land.  He could hear the rhythmic rush of water being pushed by oars, and now felt the backward movement of the raft; backward only because the raft was moving as if the back of the shelter was forward, and he was still sitting with his back to the back wall.

The move away from dry land apparently upset the goat.  He had butted the walls of the shelter several times, and now was standing at the side, looking into the holes, bleating continuously.  Adam wished him to move to the front or back where the breeze wouldn’t carry his stench inside.

“Do I get to know where you’re taking me?” Adam shouted to be heard where he thought the boat that was towing the raft might be.

“One man’s desert, Cartwright.  In what we all think of as the desert, the land consists of sand, gravel and little vegetation.  It’s hot.  But what makes it a desert is the absence of those things that make us comfortable; water, food, shade.  Here, there’s nothing but water; no food besides what I choose to give you, no trees, no solid ground, and for you, no wide open spaces.  Just the inside of that box.”

Kane paused to give Adam a taste of what he would be hearing for as long as this would take; the sound of the water against the raft and the bleating of the goat.

“No freedom.”

“For what purpose?”

“Vengeance is mine, Cartwright.”

“You’re not God.”

“That may be true for the rest of the world.  But for you…your fate is in my hands,” Kane said, his low chuckling turning to boisterous laughter.

 

 **Chapter Fifteen**

Adam looked out of the small holes in the shelter once before they halted.  He didn’t need to look again.  He could see only water.  He sat quietly where he had been sitting for the entire journey when Kane stopped rowing.

Kane laid his ores inside his boat and began to erect a tent structure on one end.  Before he stepped from the boat to the raft, he grabbed a rope he had tied around the goat’s neck  and back through his horns before they left the shore and pulled upwards, forcing the goat’s head up.  When he stepped across to the raft, he tied the goat to a post at the corner that was attached to the main timbers, rising three feet through the floor boards.

He leaned against the front wall of the box that held Adam.  “You had questions.  It’s time to ask.”

Adam had been listening to Kane as he moved back and forth in his boat, and then when he stepped aboard the raft, he felt the raft sink, indicating where Kane had boarded.  He saw him through the small holes as he walked down the side, so it didn’t surprise him when Kane’s voice came from the front.  “It’s obvious who you are.  His name was Peter.  What’s yours?”

“Paul.”

“The sheriff in Virginia City couldn’t find any family.  There aren’t many people who knew exactly what happened in the desert.”  Adam paused, trying to figure it out as he thought it through.  “How do you know?”

“I didn’t until I got to his camp in the desert.  Actually, not even then.  The only things I found were piles of rocks, the remains of a shelter, an empty water barrel, a pile of bones, and his fine china among his other few belongings.  It took some time to figure it out.  The man at the settlement where your brother found your horse remembered the story.  He didn’t remember any names, but he did tell me you were all from Virginia City.  I’ve been in Virginia City for the last six months piecing it together.  You know, Cartwright, it’s strange what people don’t notice.  They don’t remember names or faces from ordinary occurrences in life.  A question here, a comment there, a request for directions…people are eager to tell you what they know.  Especially about poor Adam Cartwright.”

“How did you know where his camp was?”

“An old conversation.  We had passed through there during some of our travels together.  We had planned to meet there before he…escaped.”

Adam’s head jerked up, and he stared at the front wall.  “Escaped?”

“We thought we could stay out there in the desert indefinitely without anyone bothering us.  That is, until you stumbled in.  Let me tell you how I imagine it.  The story goes that you were robbed in the desert and left to die.  They took your horse, your gun, your canteen.  You stumbled into Peter’s camp, tired, hungry and thirsty.  He asked you a simple question and didn’t like your answer.”  

“How could you possibly know that?”

“Because that is what he did.  Whatever came next doesn’t matter.  You survived.  He didn’t.  You should be thankful.  He usually won.”

“But that’s not what you do.”

“I went along when it was interesting.  The last person he asked a simple question before we were imprisoned was our mother.  He didn’t like her answer either.”

Kane looked out over the water, savoring the openness and breathing in the fresh air. “Now that I’m out, I intend to go back to the desert and pick up where he left off…prospecting, of course.”

Chuckling, Adam said, “There’s nothing in that mine of his but worthless rock.”

“Who’s mining for rocks?”

Adam’s nostrils flared at the thought of the souls Kane could destroy.  This had to end with him. “Why am I here?”

“To replace me, of course.  None of the guards really pay attention to the faces of the inmates.  As a matter of fact, when you’ve been there awhile all the inmates begin to look alike.  They’ll get a man back who says he’s Paul Kane along with a report from your sheriff that says brother Peter is dead.”

“And just how do you propose to make me believe I’m Paul Kane?”

“Well, I was hoping you’d already doubt your sanity by now.  I made a mistake when I threw that rock into your room.  Had I thrown an ordinary rock, you wouldn’t have thought anything about it.  Seeing me, or rather seeing Peter outside your window was probably enough.  By giving you that rock, I gave you some tangible proof, even though you were still the only one who recognized it.  The truth is, Cartwright, you don’t really have to believe you’re Paul Kane.  You just have to be confused about your identity.  I knew you were no longer questioning yourself when you walked out into the yard to show me you weren’t armed.  I moved up my schedule, and unfortunately, your brother appeared.”

“Why didn’t you kill him?”

“You said yourself I wasn’t out to kill anyone.  We’ve never killed, Cartwright.  Our mother killed herself.  It wouldn’t have mattered anyway.  I have you.  Your family will never find you.  They aren’t looking for Paul Kane, and they won’t be looking in the middle of the lake.  Now, if you’ll excuse me.  I’ll prepare your meal.”    

As Kane walked down the side of the raft toward the boat, Adam slid to the side and spoke near one of the holes as Kane passed.  “If you’ve never killed, why were you in prison?”

“We weren’t in prison.  We were in the Stockton Asylum.”

 

 **Chapter Sixteen**

Adam stood, leaning his backside against the back wall and bracing himself with his hands on his legs so that his bent position wouldn’t take its toll on his back.  His butt had become numb sitting for so long, and though he had stretched out his legs, it felt good to stand on them. 

“Kane?  When do I get to relieve myself?”

“Anytime you want, Cartwright.  That’s what the hole in the floor is for.”

Taking a deep breath, Adam looked at the hole and twisted his mouth.  He could hear Kane’s movements behind him, though it was difficult to determine exactly what he was doing; a bump here, a thud there, all intermixed with the sound of water sloshing up against the sides of the boat.

Kane walked along the side of the raft again, and in another moment, the small opening in the door gave way to a tray sliding through the slot.  “Your meal, Cartwright.  Set it down out of the way, and I’ll lower a canteen down to you from the top.”

Setting the tray the near corner, Adam watched as the small hatch in the top of the shelter opened.   A small canteen dropped, and the hatch quickly closed.  Taking the tray and canteen back to where he had been sitting, he lowered himself to the floor again and inspected his lunch, consisting of some kind of meat cut in small pieces, several raw carrots, and beans, all placed in separate piles on the metal tray.  He had no fork or spoon, but he had expected that, and he wasn’t going to give this Kane the pleasure of his asking for them.

His attention to his food was interrupted by the sudden sway of the raft.  Kane had stepped off into the boat.  That was followed by the angry bleating of the goat, who once again, began butting the walls of the shelter and bleating at the holes in the side.  Turning up his nose, Adam could easily smell him, the stench making it difficult to consider eating.  But he knew he would have to eat to remain physically strong, so he moved to the opposite side of the shelter and began to examine his food, smelling it before he took a bite. 

Adam had almost finished his meal and had taken several drinks of the canteen water when he suddenly felt very tired.   He tried to focus on the rest of his meal, but his vision was blurred.  Squeezing his eyes shut, he tried to focus again, but that seemed to make his carrots grow longer and his beans start crawling off the tray.  The small shafts of light coming through the holes in the side of the shelter began to bend.  Adam set the tray down and placed his hands flat on the floor beside him to steady himself.  Then the goat butted the wall of the shelter again, and with its constant bleating, Adam raised his hands to either side of his head.

In a moment of clarity, he realized Kane had put something in his food.  “What now, Kane?” he asked loudly. 

“Chloral hydrate…the drug of choice in the asylum…given to inmates to calm them down.  What our keepers didn’t know is that it also scared us half to death.  By the time you arrive as the escapee Paul Kane, you’ll know how to behave, and you’ll know the routine.” 

The goat butted the wall again.  “What’s the goat for?”

“The goat?  Well, the goat is the best cellmate you’ll ever have.  He bangs his head against the walls.  He fights everyone who comes near.  The worst part is that he never shuts up.  Oh, and he stinks.  And because of the chloral hydrate, you’ll swear you knew him before you arrived in Hell.  You’ll have long conversations with him.”

“You’re insane.  Just like your brother.”  Adam heard a low chuckle. 

“I’m not the one people will think is insane.”

“Why wouldn’t everyone think you’re insane?  What your brother did…what you’re doing…is insane.”

“Cartwright, there is no purpose in insanity.  I have a purpose, and that’s to live in freedom, wherever I choose.  You, on the other hand, now know firsthand what it feels like to live in a cell with bad company, bad food, a privy that’s no more than a hole in the floor, and small shafts of light to tell you whether it’s day or night.   And because of the chloral hydrate, your keepers will think you can sleep.  In reality, you can’t.  You’ll doze, half awake, watching and listening to the shadows that come alive in the dark.”

Adam’s head was now bowed in his hands.  It was difficult for him to separate the incessant whine of the goat from other sounds around him.  Still, he could feel the sudden movement of Kane pushing away from the raft followed by the sound of the oars in the water.  Kane was leaving.

“Sweet dreams, Cartwright.  I’ll be back with your breakfast in the morning.” 

Leaning his head back against the wall, Adam listened to Kane’s cackling until the sound had completely faded away.  He slumped to one side until he was lying on the floor, and then drew his knees up to his chest, assuming a fetal position.  All he could do was wait for the effects of the drug to pass.

 

 **Chapter Seventeen**

“Now Ben, what d’you mean you can’t find him?  He can’t have disappeared into thin air!” Ben was as agitated as Roy had ever seen him.  He paced back and forth in front of Roy’s desk, and when Ben spoke, he stopped and jerked around to face Roy.

“Roy, we’ve looked everywhere.  There were no tracks to follow away from the house.  We’ve ridden the edge of the lake, we’ve ridden into the high country.  We’ve even had all the hands out looking.  There’s just no sign of him.”

“Well, I don’t know what you want me to do if you don’t have an idea where to look.”

Hoss placed both hands on the desk and bent over it.  “Roy, Adam said this coulda been a relative of Kane.  Are you absolutely sure you checked every possibility?  They have to be from somewhere.”

“Hoss, you say he hit you over the head when you walked into the barn?  Did you see what he looked like?”

“No,” said Hoss, standing straight.  “He hit me from behind.  I never saw him.”

Roy looked straight ahead in thought.  “This has been going on for some time.  Adam came by my office and asked the same question, Hoss.  He wanted to know if I coulda missed somethin’.  And before that, he was runnin’ through town after someone he thought he recognized.”

“That ain’t all,” said Hoss, his brows furrowed and his mouth turned in a frown.  “The night before he disappeared, he said he wasn’t spooked off his horse.  He said someone threw a rock and hit him square between the eyes.  He was convinced it had somethin’ to do with Kane.  He told me this Kane fella was gonna take him, Roy.  He knew.”

“Well, if this fella’s been around that long, someone else in town musta seen him.  I’m gonna ask around town.”

“We’ll help you,” said Ben.  “Joe, Hoss, you know the places Adam goes when you boys come to town for supplies.”

“Where you gonna be, Pa?” Joe asked.

“I’m going to talk to Paul Martin.  Maybe Adam said something to him while Paul was tending his head wound.”

***

Adam lay still in the dark, listening to the goat.  He was tired, but each time he began to doze, the goat butted the side of the shelter, startling him awake.  He expected to hallucinate, but other than elongation or shrinking of shadows brought on by his semi-conscious state, no demons from the dark appeared.  He was aware of what had happened, where he was, and what was around him.

As the drug began to wear off late into the night, his thoughts became more cohesive.  Kane believed the drug caused hallucinations, but apparently, it didn’t affect everyone the same way.  Perhaps Kane’s experience had more to do with his psychotic mind than the drug itself.

Just before Adam fell into a comfortable, sound sleep, he concluded that other than the possibility of addiction, the drug would do him no real harm, but rather ensure he got a good night’s rest.  Still, he would have to try to minimize his intake.  He was sure it would be in the water and quite possibly mixed in well with beans due to the liquid in which they were cooked.  But the meat and raw vegetables might not have absorbed the drug. He would eat the more solid food and drink only enough water to survive.

***

The full moon turned the vast alpine lake into a ghostly, glistening sea with tall black sentinels gathered around her in the distance.   Adam had seen her dark beauty many times.  This time, he was unaware of his surroundings, off in that blissful state of deep sleep.  His mind was elsewhere, but his body knew it lacked the warmth of his blanket at home, curling into a tight ball.

He was sleeping so peacefully that he didn’t hear the light splash of the water around him; didn’t feel the tilt of the raft, and had almost learned to ignore the goat, when he was yanked from his slumber by a loud whack followed by thunderous pandemonium around him.

The roof hatch had been flung open, and rocks were raining down into the shelter.

 

 **Chapter Eighteen**

Crawling to the back corner of the shelter, Adam waited for the rock storm to end, though sustaining some mild injuries from rocks landing on him.  He used his feet and hands to deflect rocks that were coming at him, and when the torrent was over, his extremities had minor nicks and cuts.  It had ended as quickly as it had begun.  Kane left the raft without saying a word, rowing away and leaving Adam alone again.

Once again, the goat was disturbed, after having quieted during the night.  He was angrily attacking the shelter.  Chuckling, Adam imagined the animal was yelling goat obscenities at him, and why not?  It was because of him that the goat was here.  Surely the goat knew that.

Shaking his head, he surrendered his smile.  Rocks.  More rocks.  What did the rocks mean to Kane?  And more importantly, what had the weight of the rocks done to the raft?  There was almost a foot of rocks on the floor of the shelter; more than it would have been possible to bring out in a single boatload.  Perhaps he had brought rocks out on their maiden voyage, and had gone to get more rocks.  Looking down the hole in the floor, Adam saw only darkness.  He moved to the side of the shelter, throwing rocks out of his way as he went, and peered through a hole.  The moon had almost waned, making it impossible to gauge if the draft of the raft had changed.

He turned around and sat, shuffling rocks away to clear a place on the floor.  Unless he stacked the rocks into a pile, he would be unable to lie down to sleep.  He picked one up, rolling it around in his hand, examining it.  They were all shapes and sizes, but none were very large; generally no larger than his fist.  They would be an effective weapon if he had an opening to throw from, but the shelter was buttoned up tight. 

"What do you think?” he asked the goat, who was eyeing him through one of the holes.  The goat bleated twice.  “The hole, you say?”  Looking to the far corner, then back to the rock, he rose, and slowly stepped through the rocks, making a place for his foot with each step.  He squatted over them, and dropped the rock he was holding into the hole, listening for a splash.  Hearing only a slight sound, Adam knew the water was no more than a foot away, most likely less.  Reaching below him, he picked up another rock and dropped it into the hole.  The goat butted the opposite side of the shelter and bleated again.  “I apologize.  It’s a very good idea.  Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some work to do.”

Clearing an area large enough to sit, Adam spent the early morning hours dropping rocks down the hole.  He stopped after he had cleared enough room to lie down, and then proceeded to stack rocks near the hatch, so that when Kane looked in, he’d still see plenty of rocks.

Light had just begun to show on the horizon when Adam heard the familiar sloshing of oars in the water.  After a few minutes, he felt Kane step onto the raft.  “Rise and shine, Cartwright.  I trust you slept well.”

“As a matter of fact, I was sleeping like a baby when you decided to store your rocks in the box with me.  Curious, Kane.  Where do the rocks fit in with all this?”

“You don’t recognize them?  You made most of them.  This is the sum of Peter’s efforts: a bunch of worthless rocks.  I thought since you helped him make them that he’d want you to have them; a, sort of, reminder of your time with him.  Our keepers at the asylum always tried to keep us busy with mindless activities.  I’m sure you’ve noticed by now that the size of most of these rocks will enable you to dispose of them.  And with the goat to tell you which rocks to choose, your time here is sure to drag.  No matter. There are plenty of rocks.”  Kane listened for a response, but there was silence.  “The more you remove, the fewer will nag you in the middle of the night.  Now, how about some breakfast?”

Adam listened to Kane walk to the back of the raft where he moved around, presumably preparing another drugged meal. 

“Now I realize, Cartwright, that you’re thinking chloral hydrate isn’t so bad.  You’re probably thinking about what you should and shouldn’t eat in order to get the lowest dose.  By doing that, you’re prolonging your time in your cell.  You’ll have to eat something therefore you will get a dose with each meal, small though it may be.  It will eventually build up inside you, especially since you won’t be drinking enough to eliminate it.  The less you drink, the more time your body has to absorb it.  Drinking more will help to eliminate some of it, but you’ll be getting more.  It won’t make much difference either way.”  Kane had walked back around to the front of the box as he spoke, and now, he opened the small slot in the door and looked in.  “You have a dilemma.  And I have nothing but time.”   Kane’s face was replaced by a tray of food.

Adam leaned forward, taking the tray from the small door.  On the tray was bread, an apple cut into wedges, several small pieces of cheese, and two shelled, boiled eggs.

“There’s a hook right underneath the hatch.  Hang the canteen by the twine tied around it.”

“Why don’t I just hand it to you?”

“You’re an intelligent man, Cartwright.  I can understand why Peter felt you’d be a worthy opponent.  I, on the other hand, only want my freedom.  If you choose not to hang the canteen, you’ll be without water the rest of the day.  Your choice.”

Sighing, Adam stepped onto the rocks under the hatch and hung the canteen on the hook.  Kane waited for him to step back before he opened the hatch and took it.  “Now, slide yesterday’s tray through the slot in the door.”

“And if I don’t?”

“You won’t get another meal.  You see, I have only two trays.”  Kane dropped another canteen into the box, and slammed the hatch shut.

After sliding the empty tray through the slot, Adam settled back to his cleared area with his tray of breakfast.  The bread was a single hard-crusted roll.  He pulled it apart and found it dry in the middle.  If Kane had baked the bread, he could have baked in the chloral hydrate.  But what were the chances that Kane himself baked the bread?  He also doubted that Kane made the cheese.   Removing the whites from the eggs, Adam ate the yolks with the bread and cheese, and once he had finished his meal, he washed it down with only a mouthful of water from the canteen. Because the apple wedges were moist, he left them.

While he ate, he listened.  He determined that while Kane moved around on the raft, he tied the goat.  He had been unloading something from the boat, and had put some of it on top of the box.

Without any warning, the hatch flew open again, followed by another deluge of rocks.  By the time they stopped falling, Adam sat in a hole surrounded by them, now almost two feet high.  He’d have to drop a lot more rocks in the hole in order to clear a place to lie down.  He could no longer walk bent over in the box and had to crawl over them to get to the hole in the floor.  Making himself as comfortable as possible, he began to drop them one by one.

The raft swayed.  The goat was loose again.   Kane was leaving.

“Enjoy your activities, Cartwright.  I’ll be back later with your next meal.”

 

 **Chapter Nineteen**

When Ben and Dr. Martin walked into the sheriff’s office they were greeted by a din of voices all talking at once.

Roy stood behind his desk and held his hands up.  “Now, folks.  One at a time, please.”  Once everyone had quieted, Roy started asking questions.  “Harvey, you said you stepped out of the post office just as Adam left with that package.  Now, what did you see?”

“I didn’t see it at first. Not until he turned around and tossed it back toward the alley.”

“Tossed what, Harvey?”

“It was a rock.   Then Adam ran across the street, and you ran after him, Sheriff.  When Adam left town, a man came out of the alley, picked up the rock, and then went back into the alley.”

Roy sat down in his chair, taking a pen and paper out of a drawer, and began to write.  “And what did this man look like?”

“He was tall with sort of dark, silver looking hair.  I didn’t see his face, but he was wearing a dark tan jacket.”

“Mrs. Gables, you said Adam ran into you and apologized for knocking you down.”

“Yes, Sheriff, but I was getting up when Adam came by.  Another man rushing down the sidewalk pushed me before Adam got there.  I didn’t see his face or his hair; he was wearing a hat, but he _was_ wearing a dark tan jacket.”

“Sheriff, that sounds like the same man who was in the restaurant the day Adam came in for lunch,” Lily Dellaplane said.  “I seated Adam at a table in the middle of the dining area, and he came to the counter and asked me if I’d seen anyone at his table when he was saying ‘hello’.  He said someone left a rock under his hat.  When we went back to the table, the rock was gone, and that man was the only one who had left.”

Ben stepped forward.  “Roy, you need to hear what Paul has to say.”

Stepping up next to Ben, Dr. Martin told his story.  “Adam’s injury to his forehead wasn’t caused by hitting a boulder.  It was caused by something much smaller.  I assumed he’d hit a rock on the ground, but after hearing what Hoss said, I’m convinced that what Adam said was true.”

Roy looked up from his writing. “Hoss, tell me again what Adam said.”

“He said someone threw a rock and hit him right between the eyes.”

Ben slumped into a chair wearing a deep frown.  “All this time, Adam has been telling me about rocks and Kane and I…I didn’t believe him.”  He guiltily looked at Roy.  “This is Adam.  I should have listened to him.  If I had, we could have put an end to this before Kane took him.”

Walking over to his father, Joe put a hand on his shoulder.  “Pa, we all doubted him.  We all thought he hadn’t recovered from his time in the desert.  There was no way for us to know there was another Kane.”

“Yeah, Pa,” Hoss added.  “He told me flat out, and I still didn’t believe him.”

“Ben, boys, there’s no reason anyone should have expected you to,” said Dr. Martin, stepping into the middle of the small crowd.  “It sounds like this Kane wanted you all to believe just what you believed; that Adam was imagining all this.  I believe he wanted Adam to doubt his own sanity, and what better way to instill doubt in Adam’s mind than to make those closest to him believe he was seeing things?”  Dr. Martin turned to Roy.  “Sheriff Coffee, did you happen to check the closest state hospitals…the San Francisco Marine Hospital and the Stockton Insane Asylum?”

Roy stood and walked through those in his office toward the door.  “I’ll go do that right now.”

***

Adam lay on his stomach, slowly dropping rocks into the hole even as his head repeatedly dropped and jerked back up.  After a headache began to take hold, he had risked another drink of the water, knowing he’d get more of the drug.  He knew he wouldn’t be able to avoid it completely, and was betting the water contained more chloral hydrate than he would ever ingest from the food.  But he couldn’t live more than three days without adequate water.

The goat was now standing on the same side of the raft as the hole in the floor, constantly nagging him. “Would you shut up?” Adam said, beginning in a normal voice and ending in a yell.  Twisting from his stomach to his back, he hurled a rock at the other wall, causing the tray he’d left there to clatter. 

His eyes suddenly opened wide, and a devilish smile appeared.  Scrambling over the rocks, he retrieved the apple slices left over from his breakfast, calling the goat as he made his way back over to the holes in the wall.  “Come ‘ere, goat.  I’ve got something for you.”  Pushing an apple wedge into the hole, he waited only a moment before the goat took it from his fingers.  A triumphant smile returned as he pushed all of them through the hole, leaning against the wall, listening to the crunch as the goat enjoyed his tainted meal. Adam stayed and listened as the goat’s bleat slowly changed to a shorter, softer whine…a grunt and a stumble to the front of the box, followed by a thump against the front wall.

Silence…glorious silence.

Looking back at the mountain of rock, he took a deep breath, knowing he hadn’t removed enough rocks to clear the floor.  He leaned back against the wall and continued to drop one rock after another into the hole, uncharacteristically giggling at the plight of the goat.

 

 **Chapter Twenty**

“One hundred eight, one hundred nine, one hundred…”  Adam drunkenly dropped rocks in the hole, occasionally tossing one that didn’t quite fit to the opposite corner.  “Ssh,” he said, holding his finger to his lips, and then whispering, “You’ll wake Bill.”  Giggling, he began dropping rocks again.  “One thousand, one thousand one, one thousand two…”  When the boat swayed, Adam dove for the front of the box where he thought the goat lay.  “Bill,” he whispered.  “Stay down, Bill.  Pirates have boarded to steal our rocks.”

A low, throaty chuckle sounded just outside the door, sending Adam scuttling to the back wall, eyes wild, mouth open, nostrils flared.  _Not pirates.  Kane._ Squeezing his eyes shut, he forced himself to think through the murkiness in his mind. 

“Good afternoon, Paul.  How are you feeling?”

 _Feeling?  Not…well.  Think._

“Paul, are you alright?”  Kane pushed the goat with his foot and watched it stagger to its feet and wobble away.

 _I’m not Paul.   I’m…I’m…_  Clutching a rock so hard that his hand bled, he felt sudden warmth run between his fingers, and with that warmth; pain…and with the pain; lucidity.  Adam dropped his hand to his side, letting blood pool in his palm.  He was suddenly exhausted.  “It’s not going to work…Kane.”

Hearing fatigue in his voice, Kane answered, “It’s already working, Paul.  You’ve begun to talk to the goat…to think of him as a kindred spirit.”

Adam slumped against the wall with his eyes closed.  “Not true, Kane.  Talking to the goat keeps him quiet.  And calling me Paul isn’t going to make me believe I’m you.”

“Then who are you?”

There was a pause.  A smile had begun to creep over Kane’s lips, but when the answer came, the smile quickly turned to a scowl.

“I’ve been Adam Cartwright for the last thirty-four years, and I’ll remain Adam Cartwright until the day I die, whenever that may be.”

“You won’t die here, Paul.  Oh, you may wish you could at some point, but I’m not in a hurry.   We can do this for days, weeks, months…it really doesn’t matter to me.  You might just like the asylum, Paul.  They let you out in the yard for awhile every week.  You can use that time to try and remember what it was you forgot; that thing that’s at the edge of your memory, but just out of reach.”

“Maybe that’s how it was for you, Kane.  But not me.  I’m not so weak minded that I could forget my home or my family.”

“Careful, Cartwright.  Your arrogance might just get you killed after all.”  Kane stomped away, heading back toward his boat.

Adam smiled.  He knew he’d just put a painful nick in Kane’s resolve. 

***

The clerk from the telegraph office burst through the door, almost tripping over all the feet between him and Roy’s desk.  “Sheriff, both of these telegrams just came in.”

Without saying a word, Roy read both telegrams, his face turning grim after the second one.

“What do they say?” asked Ben, searching Roy’s face.

“It seems Peter Kane has a twin.  And he escaped from the Stockton Asylum eight months ago.”  Roy stood as he watched his friend wither.  “Ben, I shoulda looked further.  Adam’s like my own son.”  Bowing his head in guilt, Roy dropped his glasses on his desk.

“Roy, you are not to blame here.  The boys and I...we had a chance to stop this before it started.  This Kane…the other Kane…both had to be awfully intelligent to match wits with Adam.  Was there anything in the telegram that might tell us where to look?”

“Nothing, Ben.  Here,” Roy said, passing the piece of paper to Ben.  “Read it yourself.”

As Ben read, his eyes went dark.  In that instant it looked as if he had lost all hope.  Unable to look Joe or Hoss in the eye, he turned his back to them all and hung his head.  “We’ll just have to pray that Adam’s intelligence wins out.”

Hoss walked up behind his father, placing a reassuring hand on his shoulder.  “Pa, Adam knew who he was up against.  I don’t think he’d a gone with ‘im, if he wasn’t sure he’d come out of this, especially after what happened with this fella’s brother in the desert.  We got to trust him.” 

Ben took a moment to gather his composure.  “You’re right, Hoss.  We have to trust Adam.  But that doesn’t mean we aren’t going to do everything we can.”  Turning around, he continued, “Hoss, Joe, I want you to go back to the ranch.  Send everyone out to ride the perimeter of the Ponderosa.  We don’t have any idea where to look for Adam, but I’ll bet my life that he’ll do what he can to get back home.  Whichever direction he comes from, we’ll be waiting.  Roy, work with Doc Martin to get as much information about Paul Kane as you can from the asylum.  Ask them if there’s anyone else who might know him well.  If we can get an idea of what he’s after, maybe that will give us some clue where he’s taken Adam.”  Ben reached out to his youngest son, putting his arm around his shoulder.  Joe had been quiet most of the time they had been in Roy’s office, standing by himself in a corner.  Giving him something specific to do might ease his mind, if only a little.  “Son, I want you to look at places no one would ordinarily go…places where we wouldn’t find strays, places among rocks and boulders…anywhere there’d be no other reason to look.”

“Hey Pa, if we send everyone out to the boundaries of the Ponderosa, there won’t be anyone left to tend the herd.”

“Hoss, the herd is the least of our worries right now.  Even if they wander, they won’t go far.”

“Where you gonna be, Pa?” asked Joe. 

“I’m going to go by some of our neighbors to see if they can spare some men to help look. After that, I’ll be at the house.  I want to take another look in the barn and at the area around the yard to see if we missed something.  If any of you find anything, send someone to the ranch to get me.”

 

 **Chapter Twenty-One**

Expecting Kane to dump more rocks into the box, Adam moved back to the hole to continue dropping them.  As he worked, he kept his mind busy, remembering his first dose of chloral hydrate.  He had slept right after he had eaten.  He had slept peacefully, and when he awoke, his mind, although a little slow, was clear.  If he slept after each meal, and then worked faster to drop rocks in the hole, his body would process the drug as he slept, and the physical activity would keep him more alert when he awoke. 

He looked at his hand covered in dried blood, and then looked down the hole.  The water was still only a foot away.  Moving the rocks around the hole out of his way, he reached down with his bloody hand, breathing a triumphant sigh when he felt it submerge beneath the surface of the water.  Pulling his hand back out, he removed his shirt and ripped the sleeves off, using one to carefully clean the wood in and around the hole and leaving the other to wrap around his injured hand.  Next, he threaded the shirt through with his hand, soaking it, and pulling it back into the box.  Folding it, and then rolling it, he held the shirt above him and twisted until water streamed down into his open mouth.  When he had squeezed as much water out as he could, he put the shirt back on to quell any suspicion on Kane’s part.

Kane moved around behind the shelter, Adam assumed, preparing his promised meal even as Adam continued to drop rock after rock into the hole at a frenzied pace.  When the cover over the slot in the door opened, and a tray pushed through, Adam quickly took it, hung the empty canteen on the hook and stepped back, waiting for a fresh dose of liquid chloral hydrate to go with that which seasoned his food.  Without an utterance between them, Adam pushed his former meal tray back out through the slot.  Then he waited for the flood of rocks to rain down, holding the tray up over his head until the last rock settled among the others. 

Kane kicked the goat, bringing on a cacophony of grunts, growls and bleats.  When he boarded his boat and pushed away from the raft, Adam felt the familiar jerk and sway.

Leaning toward the holes in the side of the shelter, Adam shouted, “Sweet dreams, Kane.”

Kane stopped rowing, his lip curled in contempt, speaking so only he could hear himself.  “We’ll see what a triple dose will do…if you survive.”  He resumed his travel across the water, watching the raft until it was no more than a speck in the distance.

Adam listened at the holes, and when he no longer heard the oars of the boat on the water, he took the canteen to the hole and poured its contents out.  He would wait for the raft to move with the currents of the lake, using that time to drop more rocks before he removed his shirt again, dipping it over and over into the water, each time wringing the water it absorbed into the canteen. 

With a full canteen, he hung his shirt on the hook below the hatch.  Small ripples created by a light breeze almost always played on the surface of the lake. That breeze blew through the holes in the side of the shelter and through the edges of the hatch, slowly drying his shirt.

Adam continued to swiftly drop rock after rock into the hole, occasionally stopping to drink the untainted lake water and look at the horizon through the holes.  When the last light faded over the distant mountains, he would stop to eat his meal, leaving something for the goat, and then both would lie down for a deep, restful slumber.  Before sleep consumed him, he knew how he would end this.  He would force Kane’s hand.

***

Kane kept his supply of rocks away from the Ponderosa shore, expecting the Cartwrights to be searching.  He had taken up temporary residence in a fishing cabin on the southeast shore of the lake, beyond the Ponderosa boundaries, but away from the clear cutting that was denuding the southern mountain ranges.  There, several wagonloads of rocks waited for him along with souvenirs from the asylum: the straitjacket he had worn on more than one occasion and the four foot chain that had been used to shackle him to the bed frame.

The chain, he had no use for, but the straitjacket…Cartwright would be wearing the straitjacket along with soiled clothes when he arrived at the asylum just like every other arriving inmate.  He’d be stripped, bathed by a deluge of ice cold water, and then left alone for hours in an empty room, naked, wet, shivering cold, and confused until someone decided they had time to give him his ignominious gown and assign him a room. 

The orderlies appreciated the gowns as they allowed them to perform all sorts of unspeakable cruelties and reprehensible acts toward the inmates.

Kane picked up his gown, wadding it in his hand as he remembered listening to the pleas of the inmates, the cries, and the unanswered screams. 

Shaking away the memory, he felt comforted in the knowledge that Cartwright would soon be bearing that particular burden in his stead. Filling two satchels with rocks from the wagons, he loaded them into the boat, laying the gown over them, and then went inside the cabin to prepare his prisoner’s next evening meal…stew.

 

 **Chapter Twenty-Two**

The sway of the raft awakened Adam and the goat before Kane began beating on the box.  “It’s time to wake up, Paul.” 

Adam listened to him walk around to the front of the box where the door of the slot opened and Kane peered in.  Pushing himself up to a sitting position, Adam closed his eyes to allow a wave of dizziness, the remnant effect of his fouled meal, to pass.  When he opened them, Kane was still looking through the slot.

“What happened to your shirt, Paul?”

Adam held up his hand.

“You’ll have to be more careful.  With the filth at the asylum, there’s a good bit of infection…amputations.”  Kane expected an answer but all he got was a shrug.  “You’ll come to treasure your mornings, Paul.  That’s the time of day when you are most coherent.  Until breakfast, that is.  Today will be a little different for you.  After you have breakfast, you’ll get to experience another routine at the asylum.”

“I can’t wait,” replied Adam drowsily.

Kane’s voice moved from the front to the side.  “You’ll change your mind, I promise you.  I’ll have your breakfast ready in a few minutes.”

Crawling to the hole, Adam began dropping rocks to prepare for another dump. When the door slot dropped, he immediately retrieved the tray, laying it to the side while he hung the canteen from the hook and waited for another to fall. 

Kane listened to the silence that had taken over the box.  As Adam dropped rocks as quietly as possible, Kane assumed he was eating.  “When you arrive at the asylum, you’ll be bound, filthy…half out of your mind.  They have a special way of initiating you into the routine. They’ll bathe you and eventually give you something clean to wear, and then show you to your room.  Sounds benign, doesn’t it?”

“I suppose it does, though I’m sure it’s not as nice as it sounds, or as bad as you remember it.”

“You don’t sound afraid.”

“It doesn’t make much sense to be afraid, does it?  After all, I’m living the worst you seem to be able throw at me.  I’m not drugged out of my mind.  I have food, water…even something to keep my mind occupied.  If this is your asylum, I don’t know why you left.”

Kane’s strained to keep his calm, the veins in his neck and forehead bulging.  “While that may be true so far, Cartwright, today you’ll begin to experience the darker side of the asylum.  Remove your clothes and hang them on the hook.”

Adam stopped dropping rocks and turned to face the door.  “No.”

Kane stood frozen except for his flexing jaw muscles.  “We’ll do it your way, Cartwright…for now.”

Listening to Kane’s movements outside the box, Adam sat perfectly still, his eyes moving across the top of the box following the noises.  He jumped when the hatch jerked open, and had no time to move out of the way of the ice cold lake water thrown down in to the box, hitting him in the face.  Before he could catch his breath, another wave of water, and another came through the hatch, completely soaking him.

He shuddered at the sudden coldness, but remained where he was, the picture of calm.  Then a gown came floating through the hatch.  “Remove your clothes and put on the gown, Cartwright.”

Adam chuckled to himself at the anger he heard in Kane’s voice.  He allowed himself an all-out laugh.  “Only an insane man would expect me to put that thing on just because you ordered me, Kane.  I’m perfectly happy with my own clothes, wet or dry, and unless you intend to come in here and make me change, I’m not going to.  And by the way, have you noticed that I’m still Cartwright to you?   And you’re still Kane.”  He ended with another chuckle loud enough for Kane to hear.

 

 **Chapter Twenty-Three**

Adam moved to the front corner of the box.   He could hear Kane’s heavy breathing and knew that if he pushed him too far, Kane might kill him.  He was right.  Kane’s anger was so out of control that he pushed the barrel of the rifle through the slot in the door and fired.

Adam jumped.  He looked at the splintered notch in the back wall, took a deep breath and bit the inside of his cheek.  “It thought you weren’t going to kill me.”

“I could change my mind,” Kane growled.

“Then you’d be dishonoring your brother.  You see, he tried to prove he was the better man by provoking me into killing him.  Peter had a death wish.  He knew the only life he could ever lead outside the asylum would be very lonely.”  Adam listened.  He could no longer hear Kane’s breathing and hoped his more rational side had returned.  “Peter made a mistake.  He didn’t arrange for anyone to take his place and knew that if he lived around people, he’d eventually be found.  You know that, too.  Whether you like it or not, you need me, Kane.”

“I don’t need you, Cartwright.  I just need a warm body.”

“Not true, Kane.   You need to avenge your brother’s death by knowing that I’m the one living everything you endured in the asylum.  You needed Peter to start your life over, and I killed him. There’s no one else alive that can give you that satisfaction.”

“You think you’ve got me all figured out, don’t you, Cartwright?  I’ll remind you of that if I do decide to kill you.  It will be your last thought before you die.”

“I know you better than you think. You need that satisfaction to live.  Besides, I’m not afraid to die.”

“The way in which you die could be satisfaction enough.  And whether that’s here or in the asylum, either way, you will wish you were dead before you die.”

Adam’s eyebrows rose as he contemplated what Kane might do.   Based on his last statement, Adam didn’t think he’d simply be shot in the box.  He could be left to slowly starve to death, but his death wouldn’t be guaranteed.  After all, he could most likely slowly chip his way out of the box using the rocks.  No, Kane would need him to feel the same hopelessness and humiliation…and pain…he had suffered through as a patient of the asylum.He could only accomplish that kind of torture outside the box.

Of course, Kane could weaken him to the point that he had no strength to fight.  That meant that Adam’s original plan; to enrage Kane to the point that he opened the door, was still his best chance.  Once out of the box, he would still have some strength to fight, though he knew Kane would be stronger.  But Adam had a plan of attack that would all but negate the difference in strength; one that Kane would never expect on his most lucid day. 

“Kane, I don’t think you have the nerve to torture anyone physically.  Otherwise, why would you continue to give me a drug that would deaden my reality?  Oh, and about that drug.  Did you consider that it might not affect everyone the same way it affected you?  Think about it, Kane.   Didn’t you expect me to be out of my head by now?”  Listening for any sign of Kane’s rage to reappear, Adam silently moved to the opposite corner.  Kane had heard from where his voice had come, and in his angered state it would be easy for him to shoot that corner of the box at close range.

His eyes moving around the box, Adam listened to the sudden commotion outside, the angry screams of the goat amid loud bumps, bangs and curses.  As the clamor moved to the top of the box, Adam flattened himself as much as he could against the wall, hoping that Kane wasn’t about to do what he thought he might.

All the hope in the world wasn’t going to stop Kane from shoving the goat through the hatch.

 

 **Chapter Twenty-Four**

Ben Cartwright stood in the middle of his barn, looking from the door to the hay stall for the umpteenth time.  He’d go over the property all day, every day until he either found a clue as to Adam’s whereabouts or until Adam was found.  There had been no drag marks on the floor.  If Hoss had been dragged to the hay stall, there would be lines in the dirt completely devoid of straw, unless of course, Kane had covered them and scattered more straw.  He didn’t think that was the case.  The hay on the barn floor looked appropriately dispersed.  Either Hoss had walked to the hay stall before Kane hit him, or they had carried him.  No.  Hoss was too heavy.

He shook his head and walked outside, going around the side of the barn and searching the ground for any clues.  When he arrived at the back, he could plainly see where Chubby had been tied, but there was nothing else.  There might have been footprints days ago, but with horses riding in and out of the yard day in and day out, any prints would have long been overlaid.   

Staring out into the woods beyond the yard, he took in every minute detail.  Rarely did anyone have a need to go into those woods from the yard.  All of their business took them down the road, well away from this part of the forest.  He walked into the trees, purposely taking a different route than he had each day prior, looking for anything that seemed out of place.  The ground was covered with soft duff.  Whether they had been on foot or mounted, Ben knew there would be no tracks to follow.  He had walked a good piece away from the ranch house and had begun his journey back when he decided he’d look behind one more boulder, and looking down at his feet, he found the one thing that was out of place.  The age was about right.  It had just started to dry and would soon be about as discernable as the same hay that had gone in the horse’s front end.

***

Climbing through one more fall of trees at the edge of the lake, Joe shook his head.  He didn’t know why he was wasting his time looking through these deadfalls.  There was no way anyone would have tried to go through them.  But he was determined to see every square inch of the water’s edge, so he trudged on to get to the next pile of boulders that no one would have had any reason to descend or climb.  When he got to the edge of the rock pile, he visually surveyed a path to the other side.  He’d have to be careful.  There was no beach below him; only cold water.

Balancing on each chunk of solid granite, he made it to the middle and looked up.  He almost missed it, but right above him was definite proof that someone had been there.  A small, faint ‘v’ had been carved into the lower face of one of the boulders.  _‘V’…I don’t know anyone whose initial is ‘V’._  Whoever ‘V’ had been most likely hadn’t gone up from the bottom, so Joe began to climb.  When he topped the boulders, he stepped over the last one into a small clearing.  Looking at the ground, he saw no signs that anyone had been there.  The ‘V’ etched into the rock could easily have been carved several days or several years ago.

He walked up through a gap in the rocks and trees and came out on a meadow where he could see a herd of wild horses off in the distance.  When they saw him, they slowly moved away in the opposite direction; something he would have expected.  But something struck him as odd.  Two of the horses lagged behind the others until they finally stopped following the herd, content to graze on the fresh, moist grass.

Slowly making his way across the meadow, Joe quietly walked right up to one of the horses, grabbing a handful of mane and stroking the horse’s neck.  Why would a tame horse be running with a wild herd this far away from any ranches?  Joe hadn’t heard of any of the ranches close to the Ponderosa losing horses.  Besides that, there was no brand on this horse, so the likelihood that it belonged to one of the ranches was small.  An Indian pony?  Probably not.  Indians weren’t known to release perfectly healthy ponies.

“Hey, Joe!”  Joe recognized that voice and turned toward his brother.  “Pa sent word for us to go back to the house.”

“My horse is half a mile up.  Could you give me a ride?”

Hoss took his foot out of the stirrup so Joe could swing up behind him, and then turned Chubb north. 

“Did Pa say anything else?”

“No.  The message was just to get back as quick as we could.”

When Hoss and Joe arrived back at the ranch house, Ben was in the yard tightening the cinch around Buck’s belly, listening to Hop Sing rant in Cantonese.  Both sons could hear the frustration in their father’s voice.

“Hop Sing, I can’t understand a word you’re saying.  Speak English.”

“Hop Sing not find goat.  Goat gone.”

“Hop Sing, a missing goat is the least of my worries when I have a missing son,” replied Ben in a raised voice.

“Not any goat.  Billy goat.  Same goat come in house.  No billy goat, no more goats.”

Seeing his father’s tension rise to explosive proportions, Joe put an arm around Hop Sing’s shoulder and guided him back toward the kitchen door.  “Hop Sing, I promise you that after we find Adam, we’ll look for the goat, and if we can’t find him, we’ll buy another one.”  Shaking his head, Joe added, “How can you even think about a goat when Adam’s missing?”

“Hop Sing think about Missa Adam all day, he worry too much to do work.  So Hop Sing think about goat.”

 

 **Chapter Twenty-Five**

Scrambling across the rocks to the corner where he had laid his meal tray, Adam grabbed it and went back to the side farthest away from the hatch, watching disgustedly as the goat’s head and forelegs appeared first, followed by his mid-section, and then his rump and hind legs.  The hatch opening was a tight squeeze for the goat, the pain he must have been feeling from the scrapes made by the rough hewn wood of the hole causing him to fight and scream.  Surely, he would be wildly infuriated by the time he found his footing.  Adam was sure Kane counted on that fury to be directed at him.   

Adam balanced his meal tray on top of a pile of rocks, leaving the bread, cheese and meat, while taking the apple slices in his hand.  He held a rock in his other hand, remembering that Hop Sing had whacked the goat at home on the head to stop his attack on Little Joe. Squatting so that he could maneuver away from the goat more quickly if he couldn’t contain him with a strike to the head, he waited for the goat’s journey through the hole to end.   

The goat landed hard on his head, and though he seemed dazed at first, it only took a few seconds for the goat to realize that trapped with him was sufficient quarry on which to take out his frustrations.  He bleated loudly and plodded purposefully over the rocks toward Adam.

With his eyebrows creased and his mouth puckered, Adam aimed for the goat’s head just below his horns, drawing back and letting the rock fly.  His aim was true, and the goat staggered backward.  The corner of Adam’s mouth turned up and his nostrils flared at his apparent victory, but his expression quickly changed to a scowl as the goat recovered and continued his path through the rocks. 

Ready with another rock, Adam threw again, hitting his target.  This time, the goat’s legs refused to hold him, and he unceremoniously plopped down without another sound, shaking his head. 

Kane laughed as he watched the contest through the slot in the door.  “Though this might be quite entertaining, I’ll leave you two to get acquainted.”

Adam snarled and hurled a third rock at the slot in the door, and when it hit the metal band holding the door together, a chip flew through the slot, almost catching Kane in the eye. 

Growling and standing, Kane dabbed at the side of his nose.  When he realized Adam had drawn blood, he howled like an angry bear and stomped around the box to his boat, muttering to himself.  As he pushed away from the raft, he yelled mockingly, “Have a nice day, Cartwright!”   

Adam sat motionless, waiting to see what the goat would do next.  When he started to stand, Adam raised another rock, and the goat seemed to cower just a little. He stumbled away to the far corner; the corner Adam had cleared to sleep, and dropped heavily to the floor.

Keeping one eye on the goat, Adam busied himself with a routine that had become methodical.  As he began to pour the drugged water into the hole, he suddenly stopped, looking around for anything that he might use to give the goat some of it.  There was nothing he could use as a container.  If he poured it on the floor of the box, it would drain through the gaps in the planks.  He could pour it over the apples. _The bread!  I can soak the bread!_ Putting the cork back in the canteen, he decided to wait, laying the apple slices beside him on the floor.  The goat didn’t seem to want to move at the moment.  He’d wait until the goat turned his attention to him again.

Sitting back against the wall, Adam began to stack rocks between himself and the goat, making a line from the front of the box to the back between each space.  He had no idea if the goat would respect a short rock wall, but he was more than willing to try the diversion.  Next, Adam began to drop rocks down the hole, clearing a space for him to stretch out his legs.  As long as the goat was his guest, there would be no more lying down. He’d have to sleep propped in a corner with a rock in his hand.

When the goat began to move around, pushing against the wall so that rocks tumbled down, Adam took the piece of bread from his meal tray, tore it in half and soaked half with the drugged water.   Tossing the heavy, wet bread over the wall, he held his breath, listening.  He smiled when he heard what sounded like a wet snort and risked a quick look over the wall.  The goat was chewing what must have been the bread, but when he saw Adam looking at him, he began leaning against the rock wall again.  It made sense.  The goat’s head had to be sore. If all he was going to do was lean, Adam could give him some resistance to lean on.

“Bill, it’s time for you to settle down and take a nap.”  The goat continued to lean on the wall even as Adam shouldered it from the other side.  “Our _room_ is too small for one, and with the two of us, we need to be mindful of each other’s space.”  Reaching for the apple slices, Adam tossed them over the wall.  The goat instantly stopped leaning and started munching.  “I’ve given you everything I can spare.  Maybe with the extra drug from the bread, you’ll sleep until dinner.”

Listening for the familiar whining and groaning, Adam moved back to the wall and continued to listen until he heard the goat collapse.  He ventured a peek over the wall, and sure enough, the goat was sprawled out, sound asleep.  Adam chuckled and rolled his eyes.  “So you’re a goat who can’t hold his poison.  So much for stimulating conversation.”

After draining the canteen and refilling it with lake water, Adam dropped just enough rocks to make room for himself.  Kane hadn’t gifted him a load of rocks this morning, and he didn’t want to drop all the rocks just in case he needed them for ammunition.  He ate his meager breakfast of meat, cheese and half of a bread roll, checked the cut on his hand which was healing nicely with a daily cleansing with the clear lake water, and then leaned back in the corner, stretching his legs out in the space he had cleared.  He breathed deeply, clearing his mind so he could concentrate on planning his escalation of Kane’s anger.

A stray thought crept in.  The goat.  He drew himself up on his knees, peered over the wall again, and then went back to his corner, looking perplexed.  He’d seen this goat before. Then it dawned on him that it was Kane who had let the goat into the house.

 

 **Chapter Twenty-Six**

All was quiet on the raft with the goat asleep.  The meat, cheese and bread Adam had eaten must have had little of the drug on them.  Adam had slept only a short time based on the light outside the holes of the box.  He sat still for a time thinking what might happen when Kane’s anger exploded. 

Kane had already shot into the box once, but he shot through the slot in the door rather than through the hatch.  The hatch exposed enough of him that Adam might be able to do some damage with the rocks.  Then again, Adam was sure Kane hadn’t thought the rocks might be the perfect defense.  He had been so sure Adam would succumb to the effects of the drug that he probably hadn’t thought of any use for the rocks other than as a mindless task required for survival.

Settling in a front corner, the goat continued his sleep while Adam rearranged the wall between them to enclose him in the corner.  Then he built a semicircular wall off the center of the back wall of the box, leaving enough room for him to hide between the back wall and the wall of rocks.  He built the wall two stones thick, knowing that the velocity of the bullets coming from only three feet away could easily dislodge some.   

After the task was finished, Adam waited, rested and thought.  If Kane looked in through the slot, he would recognize the defenses Adam had built.  In an aggravated state, Kane might believe he was hiding behind the stone wall.  But if he hid to the side of the door instead, he’d have the element of surprise on his side.

Adam sat up straight when he felt the raft sway.  Kane had returned.  Beating on the side of the box, Kane yelled, “Cartwright, you awake?”

Moving swiftly toward the back of the box, Adam answered simply, “I am.”

“And the goat?”

“The goat is sound asleep and probably will be for awhile longer.  You see, you didn’t leave him any water, so I gave him some of mine.  In fact, I’ve been feeding him some of my food to keep him quiet while you’re gone.  He and I have…an understanding now.”

There was a tense silence outside the box; not even a movement.  Adam hoped that meant that drugging the goat was something Kane hadn’t expected.

“Well, from now on then, you’ll get stew or beans; something made in liquid.”

“It won’t matter, Kane.  The chloral hydrate isn’t affecting me the way it affected you.”

“It will, Cartwright.  It always does.  I just have to modify the dose.”

“Then I won’t eat.  I’ll give it all to the goat.”

“You’ll eat when you get hungry enough.”

“I’m tired of this, Kane. I’d rather die than continue to play your little game.  You know, you’re no match for your brother when it comes to games.  He was just better at it than you.  But hey, if you kill me, you‘ll lose your replacement, won’t you?  That’ll be the least of your worries.  When my father stops looking for me, he’ll start looking for you, and he won’t stop until he finds you.”

“He doesn’t know who to look for.  The only Kane they knew anything about is dead.”

“Do you honestly believe I just stood there waiting for you to take me without telling anyone who you were?  They’ll figure it out, Kane.  The sheriff has probably already checked the closest asylums.  You’d have to be crazy to think that sane men wouldn’t figure that out.”

Adam could hear rage slowly rising in Kane’s voice.  “They won’t find me.”

Chuckling, Adam needled, “Who are you kidding?  They know exactly what you look like, they know about the place your brother had in the desert.  By now, they know everything about you.  My father won’t rest until he finds you, and when he does, he won’t kill you for killing me.  He’s not a vengeful man.  He’ll take you back to the asylum, and finance measures to make sure you never leave.”  As Adam spoke, he quietly made his way back to the front of the box, pressing his back against the front wall beside the door. 

Kane made a low growl, and started moving toward the front of the box.  In another moment, he thrust the barrel of the gun through the slot and fired.

***

When Joe and Hoss arrived back at the ranch house, Ben was pacing back and forth in front of the porch.  He stopped and looked out when he heard the horses.

“Pa, we got back as quick as we could,” said Hoss, stepping down off his horse.

“Don’t get down.  We’re leaving.  We have a trail to follow.”

Ben took them to the boulder where he had found the horse manure, and once Hoss had taken a look at it and the area surrounding it, he chose a direction and started walking, leading his horse, his father and his brother behind him.

“Hoss, what do you see?” asked Joe.

Standing straight, Hoss pointed out in front of them.  “You see how the pine needles are turned up.”

Joe stood in his stirrups to look over Chubb.  “Well sure, but that’s just squirrels looking for pine nuts.”

“That’s sure what it looks like, don’t it?  But take a look at the space between ‘em.  They go from right to left in a pattern, about the same as the stride of a horse.” 

Ben wore a tentative smile at the first glimpse of hope he’d had for several days.  “It’s heading toward the lake.  Did either of you find anything that looked out of place?”

Hoss turned to face them.  “Hey Joe, what was that horse you was standing by when I rode up?  He looked tame.”

“There were two of them, just as tame as could be, but neither had a brand, and they were too healthy for the Paiute to abandon.”

“Boys, we’re gonna follow this trail and see if it leads to where you found those horses, Joseph.”

As the men rode, Hoss continued to look at the ground, confirming there were signs that horses had gone that way.  When they arrived at the meadow, the horses were still there grazing.

“Joe, how did you find them?” asked his father.

“I found tracks right over here,” he answered, pointing and leading the way to the clearing above the wall of boulders that lead down to the lake.  “I was following the shore through a deadfall down to the right and came up these boulders.”

“Did you find anything unusual down there?” Ben asked.

Shaking his head and looking at his feet, Joe answered, “No, Pa.  The boulders go right down into the lake.”  Then he looked back up at his father and snapped his fingers.  “There’s something carved on a boulder down there.  A ‘V’; like an initial.”

With urgency in his voice, Ben ordered, “Show me,” and the three climbed down over the boulders.

“Here it is, Pa.  There’s no way to tell how old it is.”

Ben looked around at the bottom of the boulder, balancing on one foot, one step away from falling into the lake below.  Then he saw what he was looking for; a small granite shard with a sharp point that looked like it had been ground down. Scraping the point of the rock against the surface of the boulder, he quickly made an identical ‘V’.

“Son, that’s not an initial.  Adam left us a clue. It’s an arrow showing the direction they were headed; out into the lake.”  The three men turned and squinted, searching out over the vast water for anything that moved.

“Pa, by this time, they’d done be to the other side and on their way,” said Hoss.  “But why would Kane take Adam into California?  The further they go, the more crowded it’s gonna get.”

“Hoss, what if they didn’t go to the other side?  What if Kane took him to the middle of the lake?”

“Pa, that just doesn’t make any sense,” said Joe.

“Sure it does, Joseph.  It’s the one place no one would look.”

Hoss let out a loud breath.  “It don’t matter none.  We ain’t got a boat to go after ‘em, and it’d take too long to build one.”

Smiling, Ben turned.  “But we have friends with canoes.”

 

 **Chapter Twenty-Seven**

Reaching over from his hiding place at the side of the door, Adam grabbed the rifle barrel, quickly twisting it flat and yanking it through the slot. 

In his rage, Kane was caught completely by surprise, kicking the door and bellowing at the top of his lungs.  He continued to yell as he climbed up on top of the box and threw open the hatch.  Rocks rained down into the box.

When Adam had wrestled the rifle through the slot, he moved back to the side of the door with his back to the front wall.  But when the rocks started falling in, he moved to the back corner, and shot the door where the latch and lock would have been, sending the door flying open.

Kane stopped his tirade, jumped down from the box and became still and quiet.  Neither man moved, and for a time silence reigned.

Adam had become sensitive to the movements of the raft, and when Kane began to move, Adam knew where he was and in what direction he was going.  He had no intention of using the rifle on Kane.  He wanted Kane alive to go back to the asylum.  Besides, the rifle had limited ammunition, and why run the risk of a hand-to-hand fight in his weakened condition when he had all the ammunition he needed on the floor of the box piled around the hole?

When he felt Kane’s movement take him to the opposite back corner of the box, Adam dashed out the door and jumped feet first into the lake, breaking his momentum in the water by kicking his feet out to the either side, turning and moving underneath the raft.  He let the rifle sink to the bottom of the lake.

***

The three Cartwrights rode quickly past the northern boundary of the Ponderosa into Paiute territory.  Raising his hand, Ben slowed his sons to a walk just before they entered the village.  As Paiute braves surrounded them, Ben said loudly, “Tell Winnemucca Ben Cartwright wishes to speak with him.  It’s urgent.”

One of the Paiute men ran past several small tipis to one that stood larger than the others.  It took only a moment for Winnemucca to hurry out into the midst of his warriors, calling them off.  “Ben Cartwright, what brings you to our village?”

Ben stepped down off his horse. “Winnemucca, I don’t have time to explain all the details, but my son, Adam, has been taken to the center of the big water.  The man who took him is a dangerous man.  We have no vessel to go out after him.  I ask for your help.”

Winnemucca walked closer and held Ben’s arms in his hands.  “Ben Cartwright is a friend of the Paiute.  He has helped my people in time of need.  We will help Ben Cartwright.”

“I don’t know what to expect when we get there, Winnemucca.  There could be fighting.”

“Then we will take warriors to fight.”

“I ask that your warriors fight only if necessary.  We believe there is only one man holding my son.  We want to take him alive so that we can turn him over to the proper authorities.”

“Understand,” said Winnemucca, nodding.  “My warriors will do nothing unless you say.”

Winnemucca’s horse was brought to him, and once he had mounted, his braves followed.  The Cartwrights followed the Paiutes to the edge of the lake where their canoes were kept.  Each of the Cartwrights and Winnemucca accompanied a warrior in a canoe, and a small flotilla of ten vessels left the shore of Lake Tahoe, heading toward the center of the lake.

***

Adam moved quickly to the area of the raft underneath the box.  With his head above the water, he remained still, only moving when Kane moved.  He could estimate where Kane was on the raft, and by the way the raft tilted to one side, and then to the other, he knew Kane was moving from side to side looking down into the water for his prisoner. 

Adam reached up into the box through the hole, pulling a rock over and working it over the hole with his fingers.  He unfastened one button of his shirt and moved three rocks inside.  With his shirttails tucked into his trousers, he had no problem carrying them.  He carried a fourth rock in his hand and used his free hand to pull himself along underneath the raft. 

When he felt the side of the raft where he waited rise, he hauled himself out of the water just enough to draw his arm back.  He yelled out, “Kane!”, and when Kane swung around, Adam threw the rock. 

Kane had another rifle, and managed to fire a shot just as the rock hit his shoulder and knocked him off balance. 

Adam ducked back down in the water, moving to the center of the raft.  _He has another rifle.  I’ll have to be careful._  Feeling the raft dip to the side where he had been, Adam moved to the end of the raft opposite the box and eased up just enough to see that Kane had backed toward the side of the raft while keeping his eye on the opposite side.  Adam would easily have been able to grab Kane’s leg and pull him into the lake, but without knowing whether Kane could swim, he wasn’t going to take that chance.  If Kane was a strong swimmer, Adam would be no match for him in a fight in the water in his weakened state.  All Adam could do was hope that Kane would stay on the raft, thinking that his advantage was the rifle.

Taking a breath, Adam swam back to the box and took another rock, then went to the rear of the raft.  Kane had moved forward, so Adam hauled himself up onto the raft, ducking behind the box.  To his delight, another satchel of rocks rested against the back wall next to him.   He waited until Kane had moved back to the center of the raft, and hoping his aim was true, he launched several rocks, one after the other, aiming for Kane’s hands.   He winced when a glancing blow struck Kane’s temple while the other rocks hit his body, and though Kane was shaken, he still managed to fire several shots.  By the time Kane got to the back of the box, Adam was in the water again and underneath the box, listening and restocking his ammunition.

Kane sat on a crate, catching his breath.  He moved his hand to the side of his face where blood was slowly flowing down from the wound Adam had inflicted.  With his eyes wide with mad fury, Kane emitted a constant low, menacing growl, as he slowly rose and moved around the boat, taking a step and turning all the way around before taking another. 

Adam swam out away from the raft and slowly surfaced so as not to attract Kane’s attention.  He watched Kane, clutching his rifle close to his body, his back slightly bent, and his head jerking in one direction after another toward the edges of the raft.  To Adam, it appeared that Kane was quite mad. 

“Cart…wright!” he screamed.  “I’ll kill you!  You raise your head above the water again, and I’ll blow your brains out!”

Adam began to shiver.  While he was active, he didn’t notice it, but still, the cold quickly seeped in.  He slowly sank back down under the surface and made his way back to the raft, quietly coming up for air under the box.  He had to find a way to get out of the water to warm up before the cold became too much for him.

With Kane now standing on the top of the box, he could see every side of the raft.  There was little chance Adam would be able to climb on board without being noticed.

 

 **Chapter Twenty-Eight**

Adam moved to the back of the raft, hiding next to the boat Kane had used to come and go. Moving the boat away slowly without Kane noticing was a long shot, but at the moment, it was the only chance Adam had of getting out of the water.  Whenever Kane turned away, Adam reached up and worked on one of the knots in the ropes Kane had used to tie the boat to the raft.

Adam stopped when he heard a familiar sound; a soft bleat.  The goat was awake and had stumbled out of the box, drawing Kane’s attention.  Taking advantage of Kane’s momentary distraction, Adam hauled himself onto the raft, took several quick steps toward Kane, and when Kane turned back around, Adam hurled a rock, striking Kane hard on the chest. 

Falling backward off the box, Kane landed prone on the raft. The goat rose up on his hind legs and came down hard on Kane’s back with his front hooves, then set his sights on Adam, who was peering around the front corner of the box. 

Kane rolled to his back, and just as he raised his rifle, Adam dove back into the water, coming up at the side of the raft.  Leveling his rifle at the goat, Kane stopped, looking out past the box over the water. 

Risking a look, Adam pushed up on the side of the raft to see what had caught Kane’s attention.  Canoes were swiftly moving toward them.  He lowered himself back into the water, content to wait until they were close, but Kane brought the rifle up and aimed at the Indians coming toward him.

Adam pushed up again and threw another rock, hitting Kane’s hand on the rifle just as he fired, sending the shot up into the air.

The Paiute braves quietly slipped over the sides of their canoes into the icy water and were soon surrounding the raft. Adam threw the rest of his rocks, distracting Kane long enough for several of the warriors to board and wrestle him for the gun.

When they had pried it out of his hands, Kane let out a strange, guttural shout, and then fled to the box, hiding behind the wall Adam had built, throwing rocks out the door and angrily yelling obscenities mixed with what sounded like terrified cries. 

Ben, Hoss and Joe boarded the raft as the Paiutes pulled Adam out of the water.  Shaking uncontrollably from his lengthy exposure to the cold water, Adam dropped to his knees. Before he hit the floor of the raft, Ben was standing over him, pulling Adam’s wet shirt off.   

“Joseph, your jacket!” Ben ordered.  As Hoss and Joe laid the jacket over Adam and rubbed his arms, Ben checked his hands and feet, and then lowered him down onto the sun-warmed wood of the raft, observing his lips and ears.  “Son, do you understand what I’m saying?”

“S-s-sure, P-Pa,” Adam stuttered through his shivers.

“You were in the water quite a while.  You’re blue.”   

“I’m g-g-getting warmer.  I’ll be f-fine, Pa,” Adam stammered quietly, looking up at his father with a crooked smile.

Several of the Paiute watched the door of the box from where rocks were flying while others recovered the canoes, tying some to the back of the raft, and four to the front where they were making way to pull the raft back to shore.

The goat, still groggy from the amount of chloral hydrate in him, was content to stay away from the sudden crowd on the raft.  He lay down at the back of the raft and stayed.

Growing tired of watching the crazy man in the box, the Paiute moved to close the door. 

“Don’t…c-close the…door,” Adam said, sitting up.  “He’ll…eventually r-run out of rocks, and then…you can p-p-put that on him,” he finished, pointing a shaking finger to the straitjacket lying on the top of the box.

Ben looked doubtfully down as Adam moved Joe’s jacket across his shoulders.  “Adam, do we really need to go that far?”

Still stuttering, Adam replied, “At this p-p-point, Pa, I th-think he’ll b-be…unpredictable.  I d-don’t want to t-t-take the chance he’ll get away…and c-come b-back after me.  This n-needs to end here and n-now.”

“Well, we have to take him into town and turn him over to Roy.  After that, it’s out of our hands.”

“No, it’s n-not.  I’ll be…t-t-traveling back to St-Stockton with him.”

Hoss and Joe, who had been standing behind Adam, listening, looked worriedly at each other.  “Why would you wanna do a thing like that, Adam?” asked Hoss.

“B-because, Hoss, there are s-s-some things the asylum n-needs to know.”

“Can’t you just send a letter?” asked Joe.  “You need take it easy for awhile.”

“Joe, I’m f-fine.  And no, I can’t j-just send a…letter.”   Struggling to his feet, Adam turned his chest toward the sunlight, intent on walking around the raft to warm up. “They need…to p-pay attention to what I have to s-s-say.  They might ignore a l-l-letter, but they can’t…ignore me.” 

Ben noticed Adam’s tone of voice had a bite to it, and wondered if he was going to speak on Kane’s behalf.  His first run-in with one of them almost left him dead, and though he seemed better off this go-around, Ben wouldn’t count on it until Adam saw a doctor.

Adam went to the back of the raft, quietly soaking up the warmth of the sun.  He knelt down next to the goat, and when he saw no movement, he put his hand over the goat’s snout and his other hand on his chest between his front legs.  As Ben walked up behind him, Adam dropped his head.  “I k-killed Hop Sing’s goat.”

“Adam, he was alive when we got here.  How did you kill him?”

Adam’s demeanor and voice seemed remorseful.  “I g-gave him…drugged w-water that was meant for me.  It m-must have had a lot…of the d-drug in it.”

“Drugged water!”

“It’s alright, P-Pa.  I’ve been…pouring it out and d-drinking lake water.  I used it to k-keep the goat c-calm after…Kane put him in the b-box with me.”

“You were in the box with the goat?” asked Ben, even more alarmed.

Chuckling, Adam stood and put his hand on his father’s shoulder. “I’ll t-tell you all about it when we get home.”  He smiled at the concern on his father’s face.  “Pa, s-stop worrying.  I realize…you’re afraid that I m-might relapse into the s-state I was in…after c-coming out of the desert from P-Peter.  But I was p-prepared for Paul.  I’m alright.  In f-fact, I’m better off b-because of my time with Paul.”   

By the time they arrived on shore, Adam’s voice had lost the stutter, and he was no longer shivering.  Even so, Ben was insistent that he continue to wear Joe’s jacket over his shoulders on the ride into town.

“Winnemucca,” Ben said, raising one hand.  “Thank you for your help. We would not have been able to rescue my son without you and your braves.”

Looking into Ben’s eyes, Winnemucca nodded.  “Help is good way to show the whites that the Paiute wishes peace between our people.  You tell the other whites how the Paiute have helped, so they may know.”

“I’ll do just that.  Goodbye for now,” Ben answered, taking Winnemucca’s hands in his before he turned to join his sons on the trip into town.

 

 **Chapter Twenty-Nine**

Standing on the boardwalk outside the Pioneer Stage office, Adam and Ben watched as Paul Kane, wearing his straitjacket and chains at his feet, was forced into the stagecoach and seated between two attendants from the Stockton Insane Asylum.

“Adam, I wish you’d reconsider,” said Ben, looking down at his feet.  “You need more time to recover.”

Adam shook his head. “Pa, Doc Martin said all I need is some decent food to put the weight I lost back on.  And he believes I’m clear of the chloral hydrate because it didn’t sound like I was getting that much.  There’s no reason to worry.”

Meeting Adam’s eyes, Ben argued, “I just don’t understand why you feel you have to go.”

It was Adam’s turn to look down at the ground.  He shifted his weight to one side, and raised a hand to his chest, then looked past his father down the street.  “I’m not going to argue a case for him to be released.  The man’s insane.  He belongs there.  And I’m not just going for him.  He has hallucinations when he’s given chloral hydrate, and there are probably others in the asylum like Kane.  Based on what he expected me to go through, I’d say he has some horrific visions.  The doctors there don’t know that.  He also talked about other abuses they need to know about.”

A smile stole across Ben’s lips.  He was worried, but at the same time he was proud of Adam.  All three of his sons took on the responsibility of setting right any situations they felt were wrong.  He clutched Adam’s shoulder.  “Alright.  But let me know that you arrived safely.  And by all means, eat!”

“That I will definitely do,” replied Adam, grinning and shaking his father’s hand before he boarded the stagecoach. 

He seated himself across from Kane, and the two men considered each other.  Nodding toward the attendants, Adam asked, “Did they give you any chloral hydrate before we left?”

Kane wore an unexpressive face.  He spoke in an unemotional, deep, gravelly voice.  “No.  They only do that to calm me down, and right now, I’m as calm as a kitten.  There’s no use being disruptive when there’s nothing that can be done about the situation,” he said, shrugging in the straitjacket.  “Why are you along for the ride?”

“To make some things right, if I can.”

“Why?”

“Because you and the others in the asylum can’t help what you are.  There’s no reason for cruelty when you have no control over your actions.”

Kane scoffed. “Do I sound insane to you?”

A crooked smile lifted one side of Adam’s mouth.  “No.  And that’s why you’re so dangerous.”

***

Adam sat in front of the desk of Dr. Asa Clark, the superintendent of the asylum where Kane was a resident.  Adam’s legs were crossed, and he held his hat in his hands as he discussed the Kanes.

“His brother didn’t escape.  He was released,” said Dr. Clark.  “Paul Kane was found to be too much of a risk to send out into humanity.  It was he who drove their mother to kill herself, not Peter, though both were blamed.  Paul tortures minds, probably because his own mind is tortured.  He’s not allowed a roommate for that very reason.”   

“How do you know it was Paul and not Peter who tormented their mother?  How do you know it wasn’t both of them?”

“Peter Kane proved he could be a productive member of society before he left.  He worked in the office, he dealt with families of the patients, and he had daily contact with the staff here.  Paul and Peter were roommates while Peter was here, and it was Paul who came up with all manner of schemes to escape.  Peter was a calming force for Paul.  Both were quite intelligent.”

Adam’s hand went up to cover his mouth.  He turned away for a moment, dropping his hand back down to his lap, and then looked the man square in the eye.  “You made a mistake.”

“I don’t think so, Mr. Cartwright.  We watched Peter for over a year.”

“Not only did you make a mistake, but your orderlies are abusing your patients, and the drug you’ve been using to calm them…chloral hydrate…it causes hallucinations for some of them.”

“And just how would you know that?”

Adam stayed in the doctor’s office another hour. When he left, the doctor’s face was ghostly white.

***

When Adam arrived in Virginia City, he went to the livery to rent a horse.  He hadn’t sent word of his arrival to his family.  He wanted to ride home alone; to see the lofty pines, to smell the fresh air, and to feel the solidness of the earth beneath him; to collect his thoughts.

Hop Sing was in the yard feeding chickens when Adam got home.  Jumping up excitedly, he rushed over to Adam as he dismounted.  “Wecome home, Missa Adam,” he said with a wide grin.  “I go tell Mr. Cartlight.”

“Hop Sing, before you go I’d like to talk to you.”

Looking puzzled, Hop Sing nodded.

“Did Pa tell you about your goat?”

“Nobody say what happen to goat,” he replied, shaking his head and frowning.

“Kane took the goat.  He was on the raft with me.”  Adam looked down at his hat in his hands and nervously picked at the rivets on the band. “I killed the goat, Hop Sing.  I didn’t mean to.”

“How you kill goat?” Hop Sing asked quietly.

“Kane was trying to drug me so that I could replace him at the asylum.  He thought the goat would irritate me, and he did for a time.  But it turned out he was someone to talk to, and in the end, well, he helped.  He didn’t deserve to die.  I gave him some of my water and food.  The drug Kane was using was too much for him.” 

Hop Sing’s eyes brightened.  “So goat help you live?”

“Yes, Hop Sing,” Adam snorted.  “The goat helped me live.”

Smiling, Hop Sing said, “Then good way for goat to die.  But you get Hop Sing new billy or we have no more goats. I go tell Mr. Cartlight now.”  

Chuckling, Adam turned to the horse and began to unsaddle him.  “Adam!” called Ben, hurrying out into the yard.  “Why didn’t you let us know when you’d be back?”

Turning, Adam took his father’s hand with a smile.  “I thought it would be nice to enjoy a slow ride home.”

“How’d it go at the asylum?”

Thinking about his answer, Adam pulled the saddle off the horse and laid it over the hitching rail.  “I think there will be some changes at the asylum, Pa, if Dr. Clark’s expression when I left was any indication.”

As the two men walked toward the house, Ben asked, “Son, you said something after we found you…that you were better off because of your time with Paul.  What did you mean?”

Adam stopped walking and exhaled before he answered.   “One of the things I struggled with after I recovered from my time in the desert was that Peter almost pushed me to kill him out of rage.  In the end, he died while I survived, and I felt guilty for living. My time with Paul made me realize that I couldn’t have done anything else. The insane aren’t responsible for what they do.  You can’t reason with an insane man. I don’t have to feel responsible for Peter’s death.”

Ben nodded and smiled slightly even as Hoss and Joe rode into the yard.  When they saw Adam, they whooped and hollered, and the welcome home celebration began as Adam’s brothers walked him into the house and to the dinner table where Hop Sing waited with a feast.

Before anyone else prepared their plate, Hop Sing piled Adam’s plate high and set it in front of him.  “You eat all.”   Everyone laughed when, with eyebrows raised, Adam blew his cheeks out at the enormity of the task.  But the laughter quickly faded.

Hoss sat quietly for a moment, looking down at his empty plate. “Adam, I still don’t understand why you went to help Paul Kane after what he did to you.”

“What if he escapes again and comes back after you?” asked Joe, looking worriedly at Adam.

Looking at Hoss and then at Joe, Adam put his fork down. “Hoss, there were some things going on in the asylum that the superintendent wasn’t aware of; things I learned from what Kane said and did on the raft that needed to stop.  They didn’t just affect Kane.”  He turned to face Hoss, draping his arm over the back of his chair.  “Can you imagine living in a place where you see horrific things in your dreams or when you’re wide awake…and where the people who are supposed to make you comfortable abuse you in the worst way, and you have no hope of it ever stopping?”

“I reckon not,” answered Hoss quietly with his brow furrowed.

Adam turned to Joe.  “Joe, after my conversation with the superintendent, I doubt Kane will ever leave that place again.  And even if by some slim chance he does, he can’t hurt me.”

Joe flared his nostrils.  “He could kill you.”

“No,” Adam said, smiling. “He’d get no satisfaction out of just killing me.  He’d need to win mentally, and he can’t do that.”   

“Alright.  That’s enough about the Kanes,” said Ben.  “It’s time to say grace.”  When all heads were bowed, Ben prayed for those who had lost their way and gave thanks for their home, their food, for his sons and for the goodness in their hearts.  After everyone echoed ‘Amen’, they all shared a smile, ate dinner, and discussed their work for tomorrow.

 

 **The End**


End file.
